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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 



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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



THE GLORIOUS 



SUFFICIENCY OF CHRIST. 



REV. CORNELIUS TYREE, D. D. 3 



LIBERTY. VA. 




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AMERICAN TRACT SOCIETY, 

1 50 NASSAU STREET, NEW YORK. 



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COPYRIGHT, 1879, 
BY AMERICAN TRACT SOCIETY. 




INTRODUCTION. 



It is affirmed by the best physicians that there 
is not a disease to which the human body is liable 
for which the God of nature has not, either in the 
animal, vegetable, or mineral kingdom, provided a 
salutary remedy. Whether this is true or not we 
do not profess to know. We affirm, however, that 
there is not an evil that sin has induced in man's 
body or soul for which a complete remedy has not 
been provided in the gospel of Jesus Christ. " In 
him we are complete." " It pleased the Father that 
in him should all fulness dwell." He is an all-ade- 
quate Saviour. He not only completely delivers 
his people from the ruin of the fall, but secures to 
them far greater blessings than they lost in Adam. 
He not only fully saves them from sin, but secures 
to them ineffably greater glory, honor, and immor- 
tality than they would have inherited had they not 
fallen. Before knowing how Christ designed to save 
sinners, no man or angel would have conjectured 
that he would elevate the sinner higher than he was 
before his fall. It appeared much more likely that 



4 INTR OD UCTION. 

his standing in the universe would be lowered, even 
should redeeming mercy pardon and regenerate 
him. But the wonder of wonders is that Jesus 
Christ not only fully delivers those who believe in* 
him from all the effects and consequences of sin, 
but elevates them to the dignity of being in a sense 
joint-heirs with himself. 

In thus saving man, Christ's greatest glory was 
displayed. In what, then, does the glory of Christ, 
as displayed in human redemption, consist? We 
answer, glory is the manifestation of excellency. 
Christ is possessed of excellencies of three kinds. 
He has excellencies which belong to him as God ; 
others which belong to him as man ; and others 
which are peculiar to him as God and man united 
in one person. He has, then, a threefold glory. 
His glory as absolute God consists in the display 
of the infinite attributes and excellencies of the Di- 
vine nature. This is the glory he possessed with 
the Father before the world was. His glory as 
man consisted in the perfect holiness of his heart 
and life. His glory as God and man united in one 
person, the Mediator between God and man, con- 
sists in his perfect fitness to perform all the works 
which this office requires of him. This is a new, 
special, and peculiar glory. This is the glory of 



INTRODUCTION. 5 

which the apostle John speaks when he says, " We 
beheld his glory, the glory as of the only-begotten 
of the Father, full of grace and truth." This glory 
consists in his possessing and displaying every ex- 
cellency and perfection necessary to qualify him 
for the new and great work of mediating between 
God and man. He has every qualification neces- 
sary to satisfy the claims of God's justice, honor, 
and law ; for the Father declared, by a voice from 
heaven, that in him he was well pleased. He pos- 
sesses also everything necessary to excite, encour- 
age, and justify the highest love, gratitude, and con- 
fidence of sinful men. In these two respects far 
more of the divine glory is seen than in all God's 
works of creation and providence. All other 
objects derive much of their glory from the person 
and work of Christ. Separate the glories of crea- 
tion and providence from their relations to Bethle- 
hem and Calvary, and they pale into insignificancy. 
It is the glory of the luminaries of heaven, that in 
their light the stupendous spectacle of the cross 
was beheld. It is the glory of our earth that it is 
merely the stage on which is acted out the great 
drama of redemption. It is the meaning, clew, and 
honor of all history, secular and religious, that be- 
fore the coming of Christ it looked forward to his 



6 INTR OD UCTION. 

cross, and will continue to look backward to it till 
the volume of history is finished and unrolled be- 
fore the great judgment throne. It is the glory of 
providence that however rude and mysterious its 
sweep, all of its dispensations centre in Christ. It 
is the glory of our earth that he who formed it 
dwelt on it ; of the air, that he breathed it ; of the 
sun, that it shone on him ; of the elements, that 
they nourished him ; of the sea, that he walked on 
it ; of the waters, that they refreshed him ; and of 
us men, that he assumed our nature, died for us in 
it, was buried, arose and ascended to heaven in it, 
and that in it he intercedes for us before the Divine 
throne, and rules the universe. 

His greatest glory and the greatest glory of the 
Godhead known to us consists in his being a com- 
plete Saviour. Sin produces different evils, and 
the soul has multiform religious wants. Let us 
study the respects in which Christ displays his at- 
tributes and excellencies in the removal of these 
evils and in supplying these wants, and thereby we 
shall behold his glory in our present and eternal sal- 
vation. 



THE GLORIOUS 

Sufficiency of Christ. 



CHAPTER I. 

In Jesus Christ there is a sufficiency of 
light to dispel our spiritual ignorance. 

In one important sense, faith precedes knowl- 
edge. In this sense Peter said in the name of all 
the apostles, "We believe and know that thou art 
Christ." But there is another important sense, in 
religion, in which knowledge must precede faith. 
" How shall we believe in him of whom we have not 
heard ?" Who would commit a jewel to a stranger ? 
Who would walk over a deep abyss, without inqui- 
ring whether the plank was sound or rotten ? To 
be savingly religious, there are certain things in 
advance, about God, Christ, ourselves, sin, and im- 
mortality, we must speculatively and historically 



8 SUFFICIENCY OF CHRIST. 

know. There are many important things we would 
be neither the better for knowing, nor the worse 
for not knowing. But there are some primal vital 
matters, pertaining to us as sinful accountable be- 
ings, about which we must be informed, or we are 
undone spiritually for both worlds. 

On these vital points Jesus Christ is the light 
of the world, objectively and subjectively. He is 
to the world both external illumination and internal 
vision. He is both sight and light. By being re- 
vealed unto us and into us, he becomes unto us the 
light of life. He is not a star, shining amid sur- 
rounding darkness, but a sun, throwing rays of re- 
vealed glory on the whole moral scene. Said a 
great thinker, " Since I have known Christ, I have 
known everything." He reveals God unto us. Said 
he, " He that hath seen me hath seen the Father." 
In nature, God is above us ; in providence, God is 
beyond us ; in law, God is against us ; but in Christ, 
God is with us, near us, and before us. In the per- 
son and character of Christ, the infinite God is so 
manifested and incarnated, as to be brought within 
the reach of human senses and apprehensions. All 
the other revelations we have of God, are piecemeal, 
partial, fragmentary, and often contradictory ; but 
the revelation of God in the person and work of" 



ENLIGHTENING US. 9 

Jesus Christ is full, harmonious, and complete. 
Elsewhere we see displayed his attributes ; in 
Christ we see displayed his moral character and 
his plans, purposes, and feelings towards us as sin- 
ners ; how he thinks, loves, pities, and consoles ; 
how he dislikes pretence, hypocrisy, and self-suf- 
ficiency, and how he delights in penitence, humili- 
ty, ingenuousness and trustfulness. Nor are these 
all the soul-enlightening disclosures the Son of God 
makes to us. He not only reveals God to man, but 
he reveals man to himself. Apart from what Christ 
was, has said, and has done, who by searching can 
find out man ? The secret of man is the secret of 
the Messiah. He solves the mystery of man's ori- 
gin, character, condition, and destiny. Man's im- 
mortality, his separate existence from his body, his 
capabilities, his danger, and accountability, would 
not have been fully known but for the mission and 
work of the Son of God. He not only reveals God's 
moral character, but makes known, with sunbeam 
clearness, how sinful man may recover the lost 
favor and image of his Creator. He makes known 
how paradise was lost, and how it may be regained ; 
how man became a sinner, and how he may become 
a saint. He marks out, as on a map, the way to 
heaven. In language of living light he discloses 

Sufficiency of Christ. 2 



io SUFFICIENCY OF CHRIST. 

the means by which our sins may be forgiven, our 
depraved natures renewed, and the rewards of heav- 
en secured. 

He is not only the central light of the world's 
history and the central light of man's soul and being 
in this life, but he is the only light of man's being 
and destiny beyond the grave. There are some 
questions pertaining to the future world we must 
answer, or our spiritual well-being is impossible. 
What am I ? and whither am I going ? Does man 
cease to be when he ceases to breathe ? Does 
man's soul survive the death of his body, and exist 
apart from it ? Where are the friends whom we 
have buried ? Do they consciously exist ? and 
shall we ever meet and know them again ? Why 
are the righteous afflicted, and why do the wicked 
flourish? Is there a hell to punish. the latter, and 
a heaven to reward the former ? And if so, is there 
any connection between our manner of living in 
this world and the rewards and punishments of the 
world to come ? 

On these thrilling subjects ancient and modern 
philosophers, and the scientists and discoverers of 
our day, do not shed one ray of light. In vain do 
we linger in the observatory of the astronomer, in 
the laboratory of the chemist, in the dissecting-room 



ENLIGHTENING US. n 

of the anatomist, or in the lecture-hall of the men- 
tal and moral philosopher, in hope of obtaining 
any satisfactory information on these profoundly 
sacred matters. The astronomer with his telescope 
penetrates the deep blue ether, and reveals worlds 
and systems of worlds, but he cannot look in on the 
throne of God and tell whether he will forgive sin, 
or whether he will provide any plan to save the 
fallen. The chemist cannot with his blowpipe, cru- 
cible, and alkalies, torture nature into a revelation 
of the great secret whether, when a man dies, he 
will live again. Philosophy, chemistry, astronomy, 
and fluxions, carry us not one step beyond the 
grave. The profoundest argument that reason has 
ever produced for the immortality of the soul is that 
of Plato, in the Phaedo ; yet who is convinced by 
that now ? Who does not rise from its perusal with 
the sad conviction that if that argument is all the 
light we have, then indeed do shadows, doubts, and 
darkness rest on the whole subject ? Said Cicero, 
in regard to Plato's argument, " I know not why it 
is, but when I read, I assent, bui when I lay down 
the .book and begin myself to reflect on the immor- 
tality of the soul, all my assent glides away." 

Now when we ignore the teachings and doings 
of the Divine Word, we are in midnight darkness 



12 SUFFICIENCY OF CHRIST. 

in regard to the soul's immortality and the exist- 
ence of a hell or heaven. Reject the divinity of 
Christ's mission, and you blot the sun from the 
moral heavens, restore to death its sting, consign 
all who have died to an eternal sleep, and leave the 
living nothing but the miserable alternative of 
choosing between the cheerless glooms of infidelity 
or the monstrous shadows of paganism. If Christ 
was not what he claimed to be, then no man can 
certainly know whether he has a soul, much less 
what will become of that soul after he dies ; then 
we behold nothing in the past but the black gulf of 
non-existence ; the future becomes an unknown, 
dreadful hereafter, and fallen man, of all beings, 
becomes the most hopeless and miserable. 

But in Christ's light we see light on our eternal 
future. The ancient Greeks had one sentence 
which they believed descended from heaven ; and 
to evince their gratitude and veneration for this 
gift, they had it engraved in letters of gold on the 
fronts of their magnificent temples. We, more fa- 
vored, not merely have a message, but a Saviour, 
who came from heaven, dwelt among us, and re- 
turned to heaven. He did not reason about im- 
mortality. He knew it ; he had it ; he was it ; he 
had come from the midst of it, and was going back 



ENLIGHTENING US. 13 

to it again. The great hereafter, which had been 
concealed from all lands and ages by the sable hori- 
zon of sense and death, he clearly, authoritatively, 
and commendingly revealed. In the light of what 
he was, said, and did, the eternal hereafter, with its 
momentous alternatives, became so conspicuous, 
that it is only wilful blindness that can fail to see 
it, and guilty carelessness which can utterly forget 
it. On some features of our future being he made 
no disclosures ; but all that is essential to our pres- 
ent and eternal salvation he made known with un- 
mistakable clearness. By telling so many things 
about the heaven from which he came ; by bring- 
ing back to their bodies the spirits of three persons 
who had lately died — Lazarus, the daughter of 
Jairus, and the widow's son at Nain ; by himself 
dying, and then taking up the life he laid down; 
by entering paradise between his death and resur- 
rection, "he hath brought life and immortality to 
light through the gospel," has rolled away the stone 
from the tomb of human hope, painted on the black 
cloud of death the rainbow of immortality, and 
opened a pathway from this dark world to the para- 
dise of God. 



i 4 SUFFICIENCY OF CHRIST. 



CHAPTER II. 

But ignorance of spiritual things is not the only- 
evil of sin, nor the bringing us light the only bless- 
ing Christ secures to us. We are as guilty as we 
are benighted ; hence in Jesus Christ there is 

A FULNESS OF MERIT TO ATONE FOR OUR DEMERIT. 

By the demerit of sin we mean its criminality, its 
heinousness ; and if this is in proportion to the 
greatness and goodness of the God against whom 
it is committed, the perfection of the law it vio- 
lates, the strength of the obligations it defies, and 
the amount of mischief it produces and tends to 
produce, then how infinitely criminal are our sins ! 
And man's sins being infinitely heinous, and con- 
sequently justly obnoxious to eternal punishment, 
then of course nothing that any finite being, how- 
ever spotless and exalted, can do or be or suffer for 
sin, can atone for it. Were all men perfect, and 
were they to love God with all their heart- and serve 
him with all their powers, all this would be but 
their duty to God. The very laws of their crea- 
tureship oblige them to do this. Nor can the an- 
gels or the archangels any more merit from God 



ATONING FOR OUR DEMERIT. 15 

than the lowest creature. They cannot love with 
an ardor or serve God with a zeal one jot more than 
duty prescribes. But Jesus Christ, being above the 
law, being equal with God, and being under no ob- 
ligation to fallen man, by voluntarily putting on the 
vestments of humanity and putting himself under 
the law, and then by his obedience, suffering, death, 
resurrection, and ascension, performed an extra ser- 
vice to the law and government of God which no 
finite beings could render, and which is infinitely 
more than an equivalent for all the rewards that 
God bestows on the redeemed, and which infinitely 
more than compensates for all the evils their sins 
have done to the universe. Do enter into and real- 
ize this great gospel truth. The great issue be- 
tween Christianity and the false religions of the 
world is just at this point. One reason why the 
sinner cannot be saved on the ground of his own 
merits, is that there would be an infinite dispropor- 
tion between the value of any service he could ren- 
der God and the glories of an eternal heaven as its 
leward. Nor would the obedience and sufferings 
of the Lord Jesus have been sufficiently meritori- 
ous to have secured to sinners this reward had he 
not been very God as well as man.- But our Medi- 
ator being both divine and human, and having per- 



16 SUFFICIENCY OF CHRIST. 

fectly kept and exemplified the precepts of the law, 
and fully exhausted its penalty ; having as our Sub- 
stitute fully satisfied the claims of justice and ade- 
quately magnified the broken law, and thereby per- 
formed a service so infinitely advantageous to God 
and the universe — a service that so much more glo- 
rifies God than would the eternal damnation of the 
race ; a service that hinders so many evils and origi- 
nates and promotes so many great interests in the 
kingdom of God — that it becomes a matter of the 
strictest justice and propriety in God the Father 
not only to exempt those from guilt to whom this 
merit is imputed, but to bestow on them the happi- 
ness and glories of heaven. This is what the Scrip- 
tures mean by the atonement of Christ. This atone- 
ment is perfect and absolutely illimitable. It is not 
only for the Jewish, or the Gentile, or the learned, 
or civilized, or moral world, but for the entire race 
of all ages, lands, characters, classes, and condi- 
tions. There has not lived, nor will there ever live, 
on this earth a sinner, no matter how vile, for whom 
Christ did not provisionally purchase pardon and 
merit heaven. No matter how great the guilt of 
each and of all, Jesus Christ has completely re- 
moved every barrier on the part of God in the way 
of their present and eternal salvation. Were every 



ATONING FOR OUR DEMERIT. 17 

sinner of the five continents of the globe to come 
in one numberless mass to the cross of Christ, they 
would find sufficient merit to pardon and justify 
each and all. Not one would be left unsaved. 
The world's guilt is great, beyond conception ; it 
does sink deep, soar high, and spread wide ; but it is 
not so great, does not descend so low, rise as high and 
spread as wide as the atoning merits of Christ. Sin 
has abounded, but the meritorious grace of Christ 
has much more abounded. Even the guilt of the 
sin against the Holy Ghost, we may well believe, 
would not transcend the efficacy of Christ's merits, 
were it not that the sin against the Holy Ghost 
involves a malignant and determined rejection of 
Christ. 

The merits of Christ are as exhaustless as they 
are full. No earthly munificence could stand cease- 
less applications. Constant demands diminish and 
exhaust earthly supplies. Earthly fountains will 
dry up, and the sun that has melted the snows of 
so many winters and renewed the verdure of so 
many springs will grow dim with age ; but the effi- 
cacy of Christ's atonement not only cannot be ex- 
hausted, but is incapable of diminution. The untold 
millions who have been saved by Christ's blood 
before us have rendered that blood none the less 

Sufficiency of Christ. 3 



18 SUFFICIENCY OF CHRIST. 

efficacious, and we shall make it no less so to the 
unborn millions who will come after us. The well 
of his merits will be ever full and flowing. We 
may apply to it too seldom and ask of it too little ; 
we cannot apply too often and ask too much. 

How gloriously full and valuable is the merit of 
Christ ! It is the world's great desideratum. With 
this merit imputed to him, the vilest sinner that 
ever descended from Adam becomes as guiltless 
before the law as the angels. Let me possess the 
treasure of Jesus' infinite merits, and I Can pay to 
the law and justice of God every farthing of the 
enormous debt I owed them, and in the high court 
of heaven look round on conscience, on the law, on 
death, and the devil, and challenge them, saying, 
" Who dare lay anything to my charge ?" Arrayed 
in Christ's merit, I have on a robe in which omnis- 
cient purity sees no blemish. Heaven's portals 
will joyfully open to all who appear before them 
clad in this imputed robe, and in it we shall excite 
the complacency of all heaven. Hear the estimate 
that Paul put on the meritorious righteousness of 
Christ : " Yea, doubtless, and I count all things but 
loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ 
Jesus my Lord, .... and be found in him, not hav- 
ing mine own righteousness, which is of the law, 



ATONING FOR OUR DEMERIT. 19 

but that which is through the faith of Christ, the 
righteousness which is of God by faith." Hear also 
the estimate of a saint now in heaven : " In the mer- 
its of Christ place all thy trust ; confide in nothing 
else besides ; to his death commit thyself altogether. 
With his merits shelter thy whole self; with them 
array thyself from head to foot. If the Lord thy 
God would judge thee, say, ' Lord, between thy 
judgments and me I cast the merits of our Lord 
Jesus Christ : no otherwise can I contend with thee.' 
And if he say thou art a sinner, say, ' I stretch forth 
the merits of our Lord Jesus Christ between me and 
thee.' If he say thou art worthy of condemnation, 
say, ' Lord, I set the merits of our Lord Jesus be- 
tween my evil deserts and thee, which I offer for the 
merits which I ought to have, but have not of my 
own.' If he say he is wroth with thee, say, ' I lift 
the merits of Christ between thy wrath and me.' " 
In life, in death, and in the judgment, let the all- 
sufficient, all-redundant merit of Christ be your ever 
fresh plea, and your present and eternal salvation 
will be as certain as the purpose, promise, oath, and 
power of God can make it. 



SUFFICIENCY OF CHRIST. 



CHAPTER III. 

In Jesus Christ we have a fulness of 
truth and evidence to remove our unbelief 
and induce us to exercise the strongest faith 

IN HIM. 

By disbelief we lost the favor and image of God, 
and it is only by believing in the Son of God that 
the Divine favor and image can be regained. But 
faith must have an approachable, divine, and ade- 
quate object. Such is Jesus Christ. He is not 
only all that God the Father can require in a Medi- 
ator, but he meets all that unbelief can demand in 
the way of objection. Of all beings he is the most 
accessible, reliable, and trustworthy. Nor is this 
all the truth in regard to him. In the highest sense 
he is the truth itself. The Bible is the truth writ- 
ten in sixty-six independent volumes. But Jesus 
Christ is the truth concentrated and incarnated. 
He is the living centre, in which all the lines of 
Old and New Testament truth meet and are embod- 
ied ; and as a living local exemplification of the 
truth, he is the mightiest of all arguments for the 
divinity and importance of his religion. 



REMOVING OUR UNBELIEF. 21 

The great question of this age is, " What think 
ye of Christ ?" and we thank the infidel biogra- 
phers of Jesus for urging it on the attention of the 
world. The question at issue between them and 
the friends of Christ, is whether the Christ of the 
four gospels is both divine and human. We accept 
the issue, and on it rest the divinity and success of 
our holy religion. If he was both God and man, 
then Christianity cannot be false ; if . he was not, 
then it cannot be true. If the historical Jesus of 
the New Testament is not divine, then the world's 
history has no meaning, aim, or clew, the church 
no adequate foundation to rest on, Christianity 
becomes a fable and our hope of heaven a dream. 
But if the character and work of the Redeemer are 
divine, and the sum and substance of the Bible ; if 
he is the centre around which all the great events 
of the world, secular and religious, have revolved in 
constant subserviency ; if he is the life-blood of our 
civilization and literature, the very foundation and 
sanction of our laws and institutions ; if all around 
us he is transforming lives and characters, and we 
hear him breathed from the lips and behold him 
exemplified in the lives of our nearest friends — how 
can we honestly doubt and disbelieve him ? 
I The argument, from the history and person of 



22 SUFFICIENCY OF CHRIST. 

Christ, for the divinity and importance of his gos- 
pel, is masterful because it is not an abstraction, or 
a myth, but a matter of fact. His birth in Beth- 
lehem, his residence in Nazareth, his baptism in the 
Jordan, his sermon on the mount, his agony in 
Gethsemane, his death on Calvary, his resurrection 
from Joseph's new tomb, and his ascension from 
Mount Olivet, are well-known, well-attested his- 
torical facts. The time and place of their occur- 
rence are well-known. The saying of Christ's 
advent and life is worthy of all acceptation, because 
they are literally and historically true. Ponder 
these facts with attention, and you must, can, and 
will believe. Read his beautiful life ; witness his 
miracles ; follow him in his journeys ; behold him 
die on Calvary ; see him arise and ascend to heav- 
en. In fine, study, not Christianity, but Christ ; 
ponder, not redemption, but the Redeemer, not 
• salvation, but the living, moving Saviour, that was, 
and is, and ever will be, and the mind will be con- 
vinced, and the heart savingly won to him. 

In the person, character, and work of Christ is 
included and offered all that God can give, and all 
that man can need. Every trait and work, essential 
to constitute him in every respect trustworthy, 
centres in him. What excellency, what qualifica- 



REMOVING OUR UNBELIEF. 23 

tion can you desire or imagine that is not found in 
Christ ? In what respect would you have a Sav- 
viour otherwise than our Christ, in order to believe 
in him ? Are you afraid he is not strong enough to 
save you ? But can you desire a deliverer stronger 
than the "mighty God"? Do your exigences 
demand greater than infinite strength ? Do you 
hesitate to venture your soul on him, from a fear 
that he is not now the same compassionate Saviour 
he was while on earth ? But though he is on the 
throne of the universe, he is "Jesus Christ, the 
same yesterday, and to-day, and for ever." Do 
you have misgivings from an apprehension that he 
is not now as literally present and as accessible as he 
was in the days of his flesh ? But he is really more 
essentially present now than he was then. Hear 
him. " For where two or three are gathered together 
in my name, there am I in the midst of them." He 
is all around you, and can be approached more 
quickly and intimately than you can approach the 
nearest earthly friend. Are you faithless from a 
fear that his mediation is not sufficiently prevalent 
with God the Father ? But is he not " the only 
begotten Son" of the Father? And has not the 
Father proclaimed to the world that he is willing 
to accept and save any sinner who will come unto 



2 4 £ UFFICIENC Y OF CHRIST. 

him through his Son ? Do you demand before 
committing your soul to him that he shall have 
furnished some extraordinary evidence of his wil- 
lingness to save sinners ? But what more effective 
proofs can he give than the humiliations of Beth- 
lehem and the agonies of Calvary ? Do you still 
say, " I cannot go to him self-invited. Before I can 
venture my all into his hands, he must give me an 
undoubted assurance of his willingness to save me "? 
Then, doubting soul, hear him inviting you to his 
cross and bosom, " and be not faithless but believ- 
ing." To you he says, " Him that cometJi to me, I 
will in no wise cast out." " Come unto me, all ye 
that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you 
rest ;" and in this connection the words " cometh " 
and " come " ought to be more melodious to your 
ear than the tones of an angel's harp, and more 
soothing to your spirit than the fanning of an 
angel's wings. What is there that can encourage 
you to believe, that is not found in the person, 
work, and words of Christ ? All that is great, and 
powerful, and wise, and faithful, and patient, and 
endearing ; all that is faithworthy in divinity, and 
attractive in humanity, is embodied in Jesus Christ ; 
and if so is not unbelief a crime against reason ; 
against thy soul, and against thy God ? 



PARDONING OUR SINS. 25 



CHAPTER IV. 

In Jesus Chr t st there is a fulness of mercy 
to pardon our sins. 

There are two common snares in which the great 
enemy ruins souls. One is the snare of self-right- 
eous presumption. Such as are captivated in this 
snare, being righteous in their own estimation, have 
no appreciation of Christ. The other is the snare 
of despair ; and more are destroyed by despair than 
by presumption, not because there are more who 
despair than there are who presume, but because it 
is so much more difficult to get out of the snare of 
despair. When once a man says, " There is no hope 
for me," he becomes utterly discouraged and aban- 
doned ; and the despondence he feels is the strong- 
est link in the chain that binds him to an uncon- 
verted state. Now the only remedy for such is to 
keep before them the compassionate, amiable, 
inviting character of Christ. 

Go stand at the base of yon high mountain, and as 
you behold its huge top kissing the clouds, you will 
conclude that there is not enough water on this 



26 SUFFICIENCY OF CHRIST. 

globe to submerge that mountain. But sail out to 
mid ocean and measure its depths, and you will 
find enough water to submerge, not only the Peaks 
of Otter, but also the Alps and the Himalayas. In 
like manner, so long as the sinner remains amid 
the dark mountains of his sins, and continues only 
to look on them, he will despairingly conclude there 
is no forgiveness for him. But let him acquaint 
himself with the dying love of Christ, let him go to 
the cross of Calvary, and he will find an ocean of 
forgiving mercy broad enough and deep enough to 
cover all his sins, however numerous and criminal. 
If you will read carefully the Scriptures you will 
find that such is the compassion of Christ for the 
chief of sinners, that he is infinitely more anxious 
to save them than they are to be saved. In the 
provisions of his atonement, and in the invitations 
of his Gospel, he excepts none. While on earth 
he welcomed to his bosom of mercy the vilest and 
the guiltiest. He pitied those whom others spurn- 
ed ; received those whom others rejected ; and 
loved those whom others loathed. It was his glory 
and delight then, as it is his glory and delight now, 
to save sinners, even the chief of sinners. Never 
from the day of his death till now has he refused to 
forgive a sinner, however vile, who sincerely desired 



PARDONING OUR SINS. 27 

forgiveness. Never has he thrust away from his 
cross one who sincerely asked to be saved by its 
blood. Not one, since the dying thief, has applied 
to him for pardon and been rejected. Never in 
the world of woe has it been said, 

"Here's a soul that perished suing 
For the boasted Saviour's aid." 

Have any of the great crowd that have gone 
down to death anywhere left it on record, that they 
applied to the Redeemer for salvation and were 
repulsed ? Not one such can be found either on 
earth or in hell. When two persons are at vari- 
ance, the presumption always is that the inferior, 
offending, necessitous party will be the more anx- 
ious for reconciliation. But what is a reasonable 
presumption in other cases, is not the fact in regard 
to Christ and the sinner. Here, all the deep anxi- 
ety, all the sacrifices and efforts for amity, are on 
Christ's side. If the irreligious were one thousandth 
part as much concerned about their own salvation 
as Christ is, then the way to hell would become a 
dreary waste, and the way to heaven be crowded with 
converts as numerous as the stars of the midnight 
heavens. When human governments issue procla- 
mations of amnesty, they make exceptions. In the 
time of the American Revolution, Samuel Adams 



28 SUFFICIENCY OF CHRIST. 

and John Hancock were excepted by name in the 
royal proclamation of amnesty. But Jesus Christ, in 
his amnesty proclamation to this rebellious world, 
makes no such exceptions. Let us read it : "Thus 
it is written and thus it behooved Christ to suffer 
and to rise from the dead the third day ; and that 
repentance and remission of sins should be preached 
in his name among all nations, beginning at Jeru- 
salem." Or read it as given by another evangelist: 
" Go ye into all the world and preach the Gospel to 
every creature." And what is the preaching of the 
Gospel to every creature, but the wide and univer- 
sal offer, a full and free pardon to every sinner on 
the ground of Christ's sufferings and resurrection? 
But the compassion of Christ towards the chief 
of sinners is most encouragingly illustrated and 
attested in the example of those whom he has 
saved. Look at the thief on the cross. Who that 
heard that hardened ruffian robber join his fellow 
and the base crowd in insulting the dying Saviour, 
could have believed it possible that that very day 
he would be a trophy of the pardoning love of the 
very Jesus whom he blasphemed ? While he was ripe 
for hell, just as he was going over the edge of the 
pit, he was awakened and his dry lips quivered forth 
the prayer,-" Lord, remember me when thou com est 



PARDONING OUR SINS. 29 

into thy kingdom." Did Christ respond, " I cannot 
remember you now ; I am in too much pain ; be- 
sides it is too late for you" ? Oh no, but he turned 
upon him a look of love and said, " To-day shalt 
thou be with me in paradise." So that before the 
sun of that day had set behind Judah's hills the 
soul of this thief, pardoned and sanctified, had 
taken its flight to heaven, and told to listening 
angels what redeeming mercy had done for him. 
Thus the Redeemer erected, close by his cross, a 
monument of his ability and willingness to save 
the greatest sinners, in the greatest extremity, that 
no sinner to the end of time might despair. 

He saved his own murderers; one, while he 
was dying, and many soon after. The centurion 
who commanded that brutal band that crucified 
him, who presided over that whole scene of horrid 
mockery, who ordered every nail to be driven 
through his quivering flesh, and some of his blood- 
stained crew, being convinced by the darkness and 
the earthquake, appear to have been transfixed with 
fear, remorse, and penitence, and before they left 
the spot may have been washed in the blood they 
had just shed, for they glorified God, saying, " Tru- 
ly this was- the Son of God." 

Nor did death in the least diminish his compas- 



30 SUFFICIENCY OF CHRIST. 

sion for those who had crucified him. Hear the 
terms of his last great commission. It was to 
preach repentance and remission of sins in his 
name, among all nations, " beginning at Jerusalem!' 
While the cross on which he died was still crimsoned 
with his blood, while the eyes of his enemies were 
still gleaming with the fire of triumphant revenge, 
he commissions his apostles to go first and offer 
his murderers the refusal of his great salvation, 
All human gospels seek first the least depraved. 
It was the command of Jesus that his gospel should 
first be offered to his murderers. As if he had 
said, " Go tell those who imprecated the awful curse, 
' His blood be upon us and our children,' that that 
blood, if they will, shall be upon them first as a par- 
doning immortal blessing. Go tell cowardly Pilate 
that the blood with. which he bought his peace with 
the mob, if he will, shall buy his peace with God. 
Go tell the poor heartless jesters who jeered at my 
agonies, saying, 'If thou be the Son of God, come 
down from the cross,' that I have not only come down 
but ascended to my throne, and that, if they will, 
my first of act of clemency shall be their pardon. 
Go seek out the Pharisees, scribes, and elders, and 
tell them they never thirsted for my blood as in- 
tensely as I desire their salvation. Go and tell my 



PARDONING OUR SINS. 31 

murderers that they inflicted a deep wound on con- 
scious innocency when they crucified me, but they 
will inflict one far deeper by refusing the pardon I 
offer them." 

Accordingly, forty-nine days after, on the day 
of Pentecost, he verified this offer and saved his 
crucifiers. Peter charged home on them the atro- 
cious deed. "Him being delivered by the determi- 
nate counsel and foreknowledge of God, ye have 
taken and by wicked hands have crucified and 
slain." And while he yet spoke the risen Saviour 
sent down the Holy Ghost, and brought to repent- 
ance and mercy three thousand of these enemies of 
Christ at once. Hear how Bunyan discourses of 
their repentance and forgiveness. Peter, in his 
Master's name, said, " Repent and be baptized 
every one of you in his name, for the remission of 
sins, and ye shall receive the gift of -the Holy 
Ghost." 

Objection. " But I was one of them that plotted 
to take away his life. May I be saved by him ?" 

Peter. " Every one of you." 

Objection. " But I was one of them that bore 
false witness against him. Is there forgiveness for 
me ?" 

Peter. " Every one of you." 



32 SUFFICIENCY OF CHRIST. 

Objection. "But I was one of them that cried 
out, ' Crucify him ! Crucify him !' and desired that 
Barabbas the murderer might live, rather than take 
him. What will become of me, think you ?" 

" I am to preach repentance and remission of 
sins in his name to. every one of you," says Peter. 

Objection. "But I was one of them that spit in 
his face when he stood before his accusers ; I was 
also one that mocked him when in anguish he 
hanged bleeding on the tree. Is there room for 
me ?" 

" Every one of you," says Peter. 

Objection. "But I was one of them that in his 
extremity said, ' Give him gall and vinegar to drink.' 
Why may I not expect the same when anguish and 
guilt are upon me ?" 

Peter. " Repent of these your wickednesses, and 
here is remission of sins for every one of you." 

Objection. " But I railed on him ; I reviled him ; 
I hated him ; I rejoiced to see him mocked by oth- 
ers. Can there be hopes for me ?" 

Peter. " There is remission of sins for every one 
of you." 

They did repent, were forgiven, and were bap- 
tized. Thus three thousand, of a people who had 
committed the most atrocious deed ever perpetra- 



PARDONING OUR SINS. 33 

ted, were admitted to the bosom they had pierced, 
and received from the face they had smitten and 
marred nothing but smiles and love. Who, then, 
this side of hell, need despair ? 

Look at Saul of Tarsus. Never before nor since 
was there a more unlikely subject of conversion to 
Christ than this fierce and intrepid Jew. His edu- 
cation, his religion, his zeal, his prospects, his learn- 
ing, his pride, and his powerful intellect, were all 
so much under the influence of wrong impressions, 
that his conversion to Christianity seemed almost 
as hopeless as that of Satan himself. He was the 
vanguard leader of Apollyon's host against the cause 
of Christ. But while he was going on his mission 
of blood to Damascus, while urging his journey with 
anxious speed, foaming with rage and feasting his 
heart with the anticipation of Christian tears and 
blood, the Lord Jesus descended from heaven in 
the habiliments of his glory and meets him. And 
has He met him because His patience is exhausted ? 
Has His right hand taken hold on vengeance to 
smite this arch enemy dead at His feet ? Oh no ; it 
is the compassionate Jesus still. " Saul, Saul, why 
persecutest thou me ?" The trembling rebel cries, 
" Who art thou, Lord ?" The Lord tenderly replies, 
" I am Jesus whom thou persecutest." And then 

Sufficiency of Cinist. 5 



34 SUFFICIENCY OF CHRIST. 

and there his sins were forgiven and his heart was 
changed ; and surely a hotter brand was never 
quenched in the blood of atonement, a more con- 
spicuous instance of redeeming grace was never 
recorded in the annals of redemption. In his con- 
version Satan's kingdom sustained its greatest loss, 
and Christianity won her greatest trophy. Never 
before nor since were as many germs of mighty 
moral power wrapped up in the conversion of one 
sinner. Jesus Christ had many high purposes in 
his conversion. One was that he might be an ex- 
ample of his compassion to great sinners in all after 
ages. Hence said Paul of himself, " For this cause 
I obtained mercy, that in me first Jesus Christ 
might show forth all long-suffering, for a pattern to 
them which should hereafter believe on him to life 
everlasting." When men bestow favors, they some- 
times enjoin secrecy on those they relieve, lest they 
should be burdened with new applications ; but 
when Jesus Christ forgives sinners, he wishes them 
to proclaim it to the world, that they may be pat- 
terns of mercy to encourage others to trust in him. 
Who were the Corinthians before their conver- 
sion ? "Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor 
idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers 
of themselves with mankind, nor thieves, nor cov- 



PARDONING OUR SINS. 35 

etous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortion- 
ers, shall inherit the kingdom of God. And such 
were some of you : but ye are washed, but ye are 
sanctified, but ye are justified, in the name of the 
Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God." Is it 
not a wonder that God did not burn such vile per- 
sons from the face of the earth ? Can the worst 
descend any lower in the scale of dark depravity 
than did these Corinthians ? And yet the pardon- 
ing, sanctifying compassion of Christ did not except 
them ; and will he except you, my reader ? 

And what more shall we say ! The time would 
fail to tell of an Augustine, who after an early life 
of dissipation ; of the Earl of Rochester, who after 
a life of abandoned and gross sensuality; of Col. 
Gardner, who after being steeped in profligacy; of 
John Newton, who after being a slave-dealer; of 
John Bunyan, who after having been notoriously 
profane ; of Ko-Thah-Byee, the Burman general, 
who after his soul was incrusted with the guilt of 
thirty cold-blooded murders — went in the dark hour 
of their conscious guilt to the Lord Jesus, and were 
abundantly pardoned. Many millions of others, not 
less guilty than these, have been pardoned, purified, 
and admitted to heaven. Millions of others are 
now on their way to the bright land, who, after they 



36 SUFFICIENCY OF CHRIST. 

had been sunk in sensuality or hardened in infidel- 
ity, after they had been distinguished for the sins 
of impiety, injustice, intemperance, and inhumanity, 
sought and found the forgiving love of the Redeem- 
er. Oceans have their bounds, the far-travelling 
sun has its orbit, but the pardoning mercy of Christ 
is confined to no limit of time or age or guilt or 
class or character. It is bound by no conditions 
but that you accept it. 



BEARING OUR PROVOCATIONS. 37 



CHAPTER V. 

In Jesus Christ there is a fulness of pa- 
tience AND FORBEARANCE TO BEAR WITH OUR 
PROVOCATIONS. 

No other being in the universe would be able to 
bear with our imperfections and provocations as 
Christ does. If the meekest man on earth, or the 
most merciful angel in heaven, were intrusted with 
the best of us, as Christ is, he would soon aban- 
don his charge. The most patient mother was 
never one-thousandth part as tender and patient 
towards her sick, fretful child as Christ is towards 
his erring disciples. Some are afraid to become the 
decided followers of Christ, lest by their remaining 
sins they should provoke the Redeemer to abandon 
them, and thereby they bring dishonor upon both 
themselves and his cause. Let such consider the 
faithfulness and patience of the Lord Jesus, and be 
afraid no more. Christ does not cast off his believ- 
ing people because of their short-comings and in- 
firmities. It is his glory to pass over the faults of 
his people, make the most of their weak graces, 
heal their backslidings, and pardon their many sins. 



38 SUFFICIENCY OF CHRIST. 

11 He will not break the bruised reed, nor quench 
the smoking flax." As a father pitieth his own 
children, so he pitieth them that fear him ; as one 
whom his mother comforteth, so will he comfort his 
people. He may correct them occasionally in love ; 
he may gently reprove them at times ; but he will 
never, never give them up. The devil shall never 
be able to pluck them out of his hand. If they fall, 
he will raise them up; if they wander from the 
right way, he will gently bring them back ; if they 
faint, he will revive them ; if they err, he will teach 
them. In a word, notwithstanding their stupidity, 
unbelief, and cowardice, he carries them all the way 
to heaven in his loving arms. 

See how patiently he bore himself towards his 
people while he was on earth. Once two of his 
disciples wished to call down fire from heaven and 
consume a village because it did not receive them 
kindly. He meekly rebuked them, saying, "Ye 
know not what manner of spirit ye are of. For the 
Son of man is not come to destroy men's lives, but 
to save them." On the very night of his betrayal, 
when he was preparing his disciples for the coming 
events, they interrupted and grieved him by an 
altercation as to who should be greatest in his ap- 
proaching reign ; for which he did not denounce 



BEARING OUR PROVOCATIONS. 39 

them, but gently taught them that the greatest in 
his kingdom would be he that served him most zeal- 
ously. He selected three of his most spiritual and 
faithful apostles to watch and pray with him during 
his agony in Gethsemane ; and three times during 
the awful struggle he came to them seeking sympa- 
thy, and three times found them asleep. Did he 
upbraid them ? No ; he kindly apologized for their 
unbelieving stupidity, saying, " The spirit indeed is 
willing, but the flesh is weak." Witness his deal- 
ings with fallen Peter. How many flagrant sins 
did Peter's denial of his Lord involve ! What 
church would have restored him immediately after 
such a fall ? Behold him in the hall of the high 
priest. Self-condemned, with the oath of denial yet 
quivering on the lips, bending under the weight of 
his remorse, overwhelmed at his own atrocity, he 
turns towards the judgment-seat, and his eye meets 
the eye of his Saviour. Did the face of Christ 
lower with vengeance towards his fallen apostle ? 
Did Jesus reproach him for deserting him at that 
trying time ? Oh, no ; Peter beheld in the face of 
his Lord nothing but the expressions of undying 
love. His features were not darkened by a single 
cloud of reproach. They were as unclouded as 
when he stood in the glory of the holy Mount of 



4 o SUFFICIENCY OF CHRIST. 

Transfiguration. There beamed forth from that 
saddened countenance nothing but a patient, for- 
bearing, forgiving love. " And the Lord turned 
and looked upon Peter ;" and that look of undimin- 
ished love broke the power of the tempter, smoothed 
the knitted brow, quelled the wrathful eye, opened 
the fountains of grief, and restored the fallen apos- 
tle. Witness his kindness to doubting Thomas. 
When told that the Lord was risen, he most unrea- 
sonably assails the very foundation of Christianity 
by affirming that he would not believe that Christ 
had arisen, except he could see in his hands the 
prints of the nails, and thrust his hand into his side. 
Behold the condescension and kindness of Christ in 
dealing with this disbelieving man. Instead of 
abandoning him, he pities his errors and infirmities. 
He seeks to bring back this poor strayed sheep with 
unspeakable tenderness aud patience. He suffers 
Thomas to prescribe, and complies with his unrea- 
sonable standard of faith. " Reach hither thy fin- 
ger, and behold my hands ; and reach hither thy 
hand, and thrust it into my side ; and be not faith- 
less, but believing." 

Was this the character of Christ eighteen hun- 
dred years ago ? He is still the same. Though he 
is on the throne of the universe, he cherishes the 






BEARING OUR PROVOCATIONS. 41 

same unconquerable love and patience towards his 
people. There he sits above these visible heavens 
with the very same forbearing love towards all his 
erring disciples of earth that he exhibited to fallen 
Peter in the hall of the high priest. There, with 
infinite tenderness and patience, he pleads with the 
Father for the pardon of his people's sins as they 
arise, and for the acceptance of their persons and 
services. His government of the universe is exer- 
cised for the good of his disciples. He occupies the 
throne, not merely to manage worlds and empires, 
but to govern, teach, sanctify, lead, and finally save 
his church. In training his people for heaven, they 
may raise temporary walls of separation between 
him and themselves, but nothing they can do can 
exhaust his love and patience. He feels for and 
nurses each one as a mother feels for and nurses 
her sick and froward infant ; and he will not rise 
from his throne of mediation till he has brought the 
last one of them home to glory. 

It is greatly essential to the Christian's growth 
in grace and usefulness that he have adequate views 
of the boundless extent of the tenderness and par- 
doning mercy of his Saviour. Many believe it is 
great, but are far from seeing how great it is. They 
believe he can forgive them once, twice, thrice, and 

utliciency of Christ, O 



42 SUFFICIENCY OF CHRIST. 

they find that he does so. But when they have 
been betrayed into repeated sins, after having been 
repeatedly forgiven, they suppose he has become 
weary of forgiving them, and thus they remain op- 
pressed, gloomy, and useless. But let such remem- 
ber that it is the glory of Christ not only to pardon 
many sinners and many sins, but the same sinners 
and the same sins many times. Peter once came to 
our" Lord with this question, " Lord, how oft shall 
my brother sin against me and I forgive him ? until 
seven times ?" He thought he proposed a large num- 
ber of times. But Christ replied, " I say not unto 
thee until seven times, but until seventy times sev- 
en." That is, he requires us to forgive each other 
four hundred and ninety times. And think you he 
directs his people to outdo him in patience and in 
pardoning ? It is a glorious gospel truth, that how- 
ever repeatedly and heinously Christ's disciples may 
sin against him, they will invariably find him more 
ready to forgive than they are to repent. Let no 
one say, I have already been forgiven so often that 
I dart not and cannot ask forgiveness again. It is 
almost as though there were a contest between 
Christ and his people which shall exceed, they in 
trespassing or he in forgiving. See them by their 
ingratitude, cowardice, indolence, unbelief, neglect, 



BEARING OUR PROVOCATIONS. 43 

and in a thousand other ways, wounding him in the 
house of his friends. And see him in return for- 
giving them and bestowing on them the rich bless- 
ings of his grace. Christian, can you contemplate 
such a Saviour without shame and sorrow for your 
sins, without again and again going to him for for- 
giveness, and without devoting your all to his ser- 
vice ? 



44 SUFFICIENCY OF CHRIST. 



CHAPTER VI. 

In Jesus Christ there is a fulness of grace 
to sanctify us. 

If civil law had any device by which, when she 
pardons criminals, she could renovate them, make 
them hate their crimes, and be law-abiding, virtu- 
ous citizens, then our worldly rulers might make a 
proclamation of amnesty to all its convicts. But 
worldly governments have no such transforming 
device, and hence may not pardon burglars, coun- 
terfeiters, thieves, and murderers without deep in- 
jury to society. But no such injury results to the 
divine government as to human society from the 
pardon of great sinners, because in every case those 
whom the King of Zion forgives he renews ; all 
whom Christ justifies he sanctifies; all from whom, 
by his atoning cross, he takes away the guilt and 
curse of sin, he, by his renewing Spirit, takes also 
its dominion and defilement. By the one he chan- 
ges our state, by the other our nature ; by the one 
he entitles us to heaven, by the other he makes us 
meet for it. What is the gospel ? It consists in a 
vicarious Calvary to take away man's guilt, and a 



SANCTIFYING US. 45 

Holy Ghost to subdue his depravity. But as all the 
means of our sanctification derive their existence 
and efficacy from Christ, he is both the world's 
Atoner and Purifier ; and as no degree of guilt 
transcends the merit of his cross, so no instance of 
depravity is beyond the converting and sanctifying 
power of his Spirit. His renewing grace is as lim- 
itless as his pardoning mercy. He is just as able 
and as willing to deliver his people from the defile- 
ment as he is from the guilt of their sins. The lat- 
ter he does completely and at once ; the former he 
does gradually and partly on earth, and completes 
in heaven. 

The effects of sin in the mind, heart, passions, 
and conduct of the sinner are great beyond concep- 
tion, and beyond the reach of all human appliances, 
but in no case are they beyond the reach of the in- 
vincible grace of our risen, reigning Redeemer. By 
his enlightening, sanctifying Spirit he can trace the 
stream of human corruption to its source, and pu- 
rify the fountain itself. The sanative influence of 
his blood follows the moral disease through every- 
vein it has envenomed, neutralizes the poison, and 
restores vigor and purity to the whole moral con- 
stitution. It is the glory of our Saviour that he 
never turns away from any sinner on account of his 



46 SUFFICIENCY OF CHRIST. 

defilement. He has already regenerated and puri- 
fied some of the most impure of our race and made 
them fit temples for his own abode. He can take 
the most bigoted Pharisee and implacable Jew, and 
transmute him into a model Christian and an ear- 
nest preacher of the faith he once tried to destroy. 
He did this with Saul of Tarsus. He can change 
the most superstitious, blinded devotee of Roman- 
ism into the clearest, mightiest upholder of the 
great doctrine of justification by faith alone the 
uninspired church has ever had. He did this in 
the case of Martin Luther. He can take a man 
proverbial for his vulgarity and profanity, and so 
renovate, enlarge, sanctify, and ennoble him, as to 
make him not only a bright exemplification of his 
purifying grace, but cause him to write a religious 
book which stands unequalled since the apostolic 
day. He did this in the person of John Bunyan. 
He can take the profane, licentious, infidel captain 
of a slave-ship, and so mightily transform him as to 
make him not only an eminent Christian minister, 
but the writer of letters and hymns which will be 
read and sung as long as the English language is 
spoken. He did this in the case of John Newton. 

It has been said that, after all, Christians are no 
better than others. If this is true, then is Chris- 



SANCTIFYING US. 47 

tianity a failure in one essential respect ; then Christ 
is not a complete Saviour. But there are untold 
millions of examples that abundantly refute this 
charge. All around us are living attestations that 
the grace of Christ makes the intemperate sober, 
the impure chaste, the proud humble, the revengeful 
, forgiving, the covetous liberal, the repining submis- 
sive, and the profane devout. The grace of our 
Redeemer rectifies the seat of being. By his regen- 
erating Spirit he extirpates rebellion from the hu- 
man will, unfaithfulness from the memory, error 
from the judgment, carnality from the affections, 
and folly from the imagination. He can so trans- 
form and reverse the desires, tastes, and principles 
of the soul as to make a man love what he once 
hated, and hate what he once loved. He can expel 
from the soul its sinful loves and proclivities, by 
begetting a new spiritual love. He extinguishes in 
the soul the love of sin by awakening in it the su- 
perior pleasures and hopes of his religion. Herein 
is the difference between the evangelical conversion 
that Jesus by his Spirit effects in the life and char- 
acter of man, and a mere moral reformation. In 
the one case sin is merely avoided from worldly 
motives, while it is still loved ; in the other it is 
abandoned and shunned because it is abhorred. 



48 SUFFICIENCY OF CHRIST. 

The sins which the moral man merely avoids out 
of regard to his character, or from the fear of con- 
sequences, Jesus inclines his people to hate and 
willingly renounce. The evils which the moral man 
only restrains and abates, the world's Redeemer 
eradicates. Hence the one appears far better than 
he really is ; and the subject of grace is far better 
than he appears to be. The one is only apparently 
improved in some respects ; the other, in principle, 
desire, and aim, is in reality and appearance \m- 
proved in every respect. It is in this way that 
Jesus gradually, yet effectually and thoroughly, 
saves his people from the love, bondage, pollution, 
and practice of sin. 

Every Christian is the subject of a radical trans- 
formation, not only in his actions, but in his disposi- 
tion. In this world Jesus saves every one of his true 
disciples from the love and dominion of every sin. 
There is no unknown sin that such a man does not 
wish to discover, and no sin discovered which he 
does not loathe and resolve to abandon, and no sin 
which he hates and resolves to forsake that he does 
not strive and labor to destroy — denying them- 
selves of all ungodliness and worldly lusts, and liv- 
ing soberly, righteously, and godly in this present 
world. 



SANCTIFYING US. 



49 



But why are not Christians more completely 
delivered from sin than they are ? Why are not 
the best of the friends of Christ better and holier 
than they are ? Why is our faith so weak ? Why 
are our hopes so dull, our desires so feeble, our love 
so cold, and our religious characters so indistinct, 
unremarkable, and uninfluential ? Why are there 
so many who seem to aim at and to possess no 
more than just enough religion to keep them out of 
hell ? Are we straitened in Christ ? Is he not as 
able and as willing to sanctify us as he is to justify 
us ? Do not all our personal, as well as relative 
wants, find in him a corresponding supply ? And 
is it not as essential to his glory that his people be 
delivered from the pollution of sin, as it is that they 
be saved from the curse of sin? Why, in fine, with 
such an infinitude of sanctifying resources in our 
Redeemer, are we no more like him in temper and 
conduct than we are ? Because we too much rely 
upon ourselves and the subordinate means of grace, 
and do not with sufficient frequency and strength 
of faith apply to the Lord Jesus Christ. If all the 
light in the universe dwells in the sun, how can we 
obtain light except from the sun ? Were all the 
water in the world in one reservoir, how could any 
obtain water without applying to that reservoir? 

Sufficiency of Christ. 7 



5 o 6" UFFICIENC Y OF CHRIST. 

Equally evident it is that if all the grace that puri- 
fies the heart dwells only in Jesus Christ, then none 
can grow in religious purity without a believing ap- 
plication to Christ. Here is the source of our 
meagre piety. We look to other means of religious 
growth than the fulness of Christ. But we can no 
more be sanctified without the grace of Christ than 
we can be pardoned without his mercy. Christian, 
make the experiment, and you will find that one 
believing prayer to Christ for the impartation of his 
light and strength and love will do more to extin- 
guish the fire of lust and passion, overcome tempta- 
tion, and exalt, ennoble, and refine the soul, than the 
most earnest and systematic use of all the subordi- 
nate means of grace. You will never grow in holi- 
ness in any other way. But aim daily of his ful- 
ness to receive, " and grace for grace." As your 
temptations, needs, and sins arise, cultivate the 
habit of going to him who "is full of grace and 
truth." Appropriate to your necessities "the ful- 
ness of him that filleth all in all," and you will find 
that you cannot and dare not wilfully sin. 

Whether, then, you want victory over tempta- 
tions, or stronger faith, or a brighter hope, or in- 
tenser love, or greater courage, or a tenderer con- 
science, or more humility, or more meekness, or 



SANCTIFYING US. 51 

more strength of religious principles, or more light, 
or peace of mind, go to your Saviour, and you will 
be freely and abundantly supplied. He will not 
work in you unmixed purity this side the grave, but 
at death he will perfect that which concerneth you, 
and present your soul faultless before his Father's 
throne with exceeding joy. Glorious Saviour, that 
thus sanctifies those whom he justifies ! 



52 SUFFICIENCY OF CHRIST. 



CHAPTER VII. 

In Jesus there is a fulness of moral and 
religious excellence for our imitation and 
transformation. 

The sanctifkation of which we have spoken con- 
sists in deliverance from sin. This, though un- 
speakably great, is only a negative blessing. When 
man is saved from sin he only stands equal to 
Adam before his fall. But the Christian is not 
only redeemed from sin, but is raised to a positive 
resemblance of Christ — is actually conformed to 
the image of the Son of God. In Jesus Christ the 
Christian has an approachable, imitable, perfect, 
and attractive model. He is the bright contrast of 
everything we should shun, and the embodiment of 
everything we should aim at. In the brightness of 
his example our every sin, whether of defect or 
excess, is made to appear infinitely detestable, and 
in that example is harmoniously displayed every 
virtue essential, when imitated, to exalt us in reli- 
gious excellence above the angels ; and how it en- 
hances the glory of our Redeemer's character to be 



FORMING US TO HIS IMAGE. 53 

both a Propitiation for sins and a Pattern for our 
lives ! 

When Napoleon Bonaparte retreated from Rus- 
sia he saved a fragment of his army from utter 
destruction by the force of his own example. Fore- 
going the privilege of his rank, he dismounted from 
his horse, and put himself not only at the head of 
his men, but on a level with them. He shared 
their hard beds, lived on their scanty rations ; every 
foot they walked he walked, every foe they faced 
he faced, and every hardship they endured he bore. 
The result was, that teaching and encouraging them 
by his own example, saying to them, not Forward, 
but Follow, he could lead them even up to the 
cannon's mouth. So Jesus Christ is the Captain, 
not of a small retreating, but of a large invading 
army, which will finally be victorious over Satan, 
the world, and the flesh, because, amid other rea- 
sons, he inspires his sacramental host by the force 
of his own example. One of the unspeakable ad- 
vantages of his religion is, that he not only, by pre- 
cept and doctrine, tells us in what his service con- 
sists, but by his own example he has shown us how 
to perform it. He goes before us. He sets us an 
example that we may follow his steps. When we 
hesitate, or go astray, or stumble, we not only hear 



54 SUFFICIENCY OF CHRIST. 

his voice behind us saying, " This is the way ; walk 
ye in it," but we see his incarnate lovely form be- 
fore us, sometimes nearer and sometimes farther, 
sometimes more and sometimes less distinct, accord- 
ing to the keenness of our vision and the clearness 
of our spiritual atmosphere. But even when our 
eyes are dimmest and our heavens are haziest, if 
we are believers, we can still see him. Notwith- 
standing the mist and smoke and dust of unbelief, 
we can still discern a form like that of the Son of 
man, not merely pointing out the path, but often 
clearing away the obstructions in it, opening unex- 
pected passages, transforming difficulties into helps, 
levelling mountains, filling up valleys, and bridging 
streams that seem impassable. Oh, what a blessed 
thing to have Christ for our Exemplar !* How can 
our hopes sink or our fears prevail while our Fore- 
runner embodies his religion in pur sight ? Often 
some of us fall exhausted and faint on the way ; but 
when we see the way marked with the tears and 
blood of our Master, we recover new strength and 
resume the journey. 

Study the example of Christ aright, and you can 
hardly find a phase of Christian experience that 
does not find something in the life of the Man of 

* Dr. J. A. Alexander. 



FORMING US TO HIS IMAGE. 55 

Nazareth answering to it. We serve a Master 
who trod every step that he would have us tread, 
bore every burden he would have us bear, met 
every temptation he would have us meet, shared 
every grief that he would have us share, and did 
every duty he would have us do. Many defeat the 
influence of Christ's example by exalting it so high 
that it is beyond the reach of their sympathy and 
imitation. But the chief glory of our Lord's exam- 
ple is that it is singularly accessible and imitable. 
Of all lives, his was the most communicable and 
practicable, most within the reach of the sympathy 
and resemblance of the true believer. Read his life 
carefully, and you will see him exemplarily teaching 
you how to do the very things it is most important 
you should do in order to be thoroughly religious. 
Would you know how to meet and overcome temp- 
tations ; how to regard and treat your enemies ; 
how to be a good son, a good friend, a good neigh- 
bor, and a good citizen ; how to sympathize with 
and treat the guilty, down-trodden, and offcast ; 
how to meet and bear the afflictions of life ; how to 
understand and observe the ordinances of the gos- 
pel ; how to appreciate and use the means of grace ; 
how to win and convert the ungodly ; in a word, 
how to meet your obligations to God, to yourself, to 



56 SUFFICIENCY OF CHRIST. 

the world, and to the church, prayerfully study the 
example of Christ. And again, would you supply 
your Christian character with every missing temper 
and trait, then compare your character with his, and 
strive to conform your life to his in all respects in 
which you are unlike him. How infinitely great 
the contrast ! Do you mourn over your remaining 
pride ? In prayerful dependence on the helps of 
his Spirit, study the character of him who was 
meek and lowly in mind, and you will find yourself 
growing humble, even as he was. Do you find it 
hard to forgive those who have wronged you ? Be- 
hold him when dying praying that his murderers 
might be forgiven. Is indolence your besetting 
sin ? Behold him not fixing himself in Jerusalem, 
and requiring those who needed his aid to seek him, 
but leading an itinerant, migratory life, going about 
doing good ; here teaching the ignorant, there re- 
claiming the depraved ; to-day healing the diseased 
and soothing the sorrowful, to-morrow casting out 
devils, pardoning the guilty, and raising the dead. 
Are your prayers cold, brief, and infrequent ? Be- 
hold him retiring to solitary mountains, and spend- 
ing whole nights in secret communion with his 
Father. In sum, our Redeemer was an attractive 
pattern of all that is pure and lovely and of good 



FORMING US TO HIS IMAGE. 57 

report — of all that is kind and benevolent and mer- 
ciful. He was a model of self-denial, of forgive- 
ness of injuries, of patience amid the greatest 
wrongs, of active usefulness in the face of the great- 
est discouragements. Now let his disciples habitu- 
ally study his character in these regards, and habit- 
ually rely on his strength to enable them to imbibe 
his spirit and copy his traits, and they will grow in 
likeness to his image and in preparation for useful- 
ness and for the enjoyment of his immediate pres- 
ence. The best of earth have their defects ; hence 
if we take them for our models, the time will come 
when we shall equal them. But Christ's excellen- 
cies are limitless, and hence through all time and 
eternity, as the redeemed shall continue to grow in 
moral worth and loveliness, the character of Christ 
will continue to unfold new excellencies, as they 
shall be capable of appreciating and imitating them, 
in endless progression ; and in thus becoming the 
accessible, attractive, perfect model of his saints, 
and. in transforming them into his own image, in 
those who once displayed the very image of Satan 
himself, he is far more glorified than he is in the 
shining of a thousand worlds. Oh, it is a great 
thing in religion to have a divine imitable model 
after which to shape our lives ! Do not rely on 

Sufficieacy of Christ. 8 



5 8 SUFFICIENCY OF CHRIST. 

Christ as a Mediator less, but copy him more close- 
ly as a model. That you may be justified before 
God without works, know nothing among men but 
Jesus crucified ; and that you may illustrate and 
prove your faith by your works, know nothing save 
Christ exemplified. Knowing Christ in these two 
respects is the religion that honors God and saves 
the soul. 



ATTRACTING OUR LOVE, 59 



CHAPTER VIII. 

The glory of Christ is seen also in his ful- 
ness OF MORAL BEAUTY AND ATTRACTIVENESS FOR 
US TO LOVE. 

Man is so made that he must love some object 
supremely, and whatever he loves most is his god. 
He can no more live morally without loving some- 
thing supremely, than he can live physically with- 
out breathing. But in whom can he find a being 
worthy of supreme love ? Where in the universe is 
there one within the reach of his affections whom 
he may safely and savingly love with all his heart, 
mind, and strength ? The first and chief est of all 
commandments, yea, the sum of all is, Thou shalt 
love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and soul. 
But who can love or think of an impersonal, abso- 
lute God ? He eludes our thoughts and affections. 
Nor are we sufficiently acquainted with the angels 
to fasten on them the affections of our souls — they 
are but creatures ; and the best of mankind are finite 
and stained with imperfections. To love the great- 
est and best of earth supremely, is to deify them 
and degrade ourselves. But the historical Jesus of 



6o SUFFICIENCY OF CHRIST. 

the four Gospels meets this deep want of our souls. 
Amid all other persons and characters of the uni- 
verse, He who was born in Bethlehem, brought up 
at Nazareth, was baptized in the Jordan, opened his 
lips on the mount, walked by the Sea of Galilee, 
who healed and fed and comforted, and died on the 
cross, he, he is just the person and character whom 
we may and can and ought to love with all our 
mind, heart, and strength. Love is a powerfully 
transforming principle. Every one tends to resem- 
ble the object of his supreme attachment. If he 
loves an object sordid and mean, he will become 
sordid and mean himself ; while, if he love an ob- 
ject grand and pure, he will become refined and 
elevated. It is so in loving Jesus Christ. He be- 
ing the greatest among the pure, and the purest 
among the great, the perfection of all beauty and 
the centre of all excellency, it follows that in pro- 
portion to the intensity of our love for him will we 
be renewed, purified, and ennobled. Yet it will not 
be religiously safe for us to love him supremely un- 
less there is in him an infinitude of moral beauty. 
But this is just the glorious trait he possesses. He 
is infinitely lovely and loving. 

Earth has never yet produced a man as great 
and as good as he might have been. Hence when 






ATTRACTING OUR LOVE. 61 

we would form an ideally perfect character, we have 
to bring together and combine traits from many 
originals. From one we borrow his magnanimity, 
from another his sweetness and affability, from an- 
other his tender sympathy, from another his disin- 
terestedness, from another his meekness and cour- 
age, from another his patience, from another his 
self-mastery, and from another his deep devotion. 
But let us bring forward all the excellencies of the 
excellent of earth, all that was pure in Joseph, meek 
in Moses, and patient in Job ; the tenderness of a 
John and the heroism of a Paul ; the friendship of 
a Jonathan ; the wisdom of a Newton and the be- 
nevolence of a Howard. To these attractions of 
humanity add all the excellencies of the angels. 
Clothe these with all the charms which your ima- 
gination can supply, render them complete, com- 
bine them, and yet this imaginary character would 
be no more to the character of Christ in point 
of loveliness than one ray is to the sun. " He is 
fairer than the children of men," infinitely fairer 
than all the children of God, as much above the 
angels as he is above mortals, comprising in him- 
self all the graces of time and all the perfections of 
eternity. " He is the chief among ten thousand ; 
yea, he is altogether lovely." As every ray of light 



62 SUFFICIENCY OF CHRIST. 

in the natural world may be traced up in conver- 
ging rays to the sun, so every trait of moral loveli- 
ness found in good men and angels is but a feeble 
ray from him, the sun of the moral universe. Nay 
more, creation draws all her beauties from him ; 
and can we suppose that he has imparted to nature 
more beauty than he possesses ? When our eyes 
rove over the charming scenes of creation, when 
we look at the beauties of the heavenly orbs, when 
we look at the rainbow and the lovely sunset, we 
may well exclaim with Milton, " How wondrous 
fair ! Thyself how lovely then." 

" Nor earth, nor suns, nor seas, nor stars, 
Nor heaven, his full resemblance bears; 
His beauties we can never trace 
Till we behold him face to face." 

In the royal gallery at Dresden there is a paint- 
ing of the Divine Child by Raphael, that is more 
admired for its beauty than any other like produce 
tion. Said one, "I could spend an hour of every 
day in the year in gazing on that assemblage of 
human, angelic, and divine ideals." There was a 
tourist, who was so charmed by this picture, that 
day by day, for two months, he stood before the 
wonderful conception, spell-bound, occasionally 
weeping with delight as some new beauty would 



ATTRACTING OUR LOVE. 63 

appear ; and when his last day had arrived, and his 
luggage was packed, and his horses were ready for 
the road, he ran back and took a parting gaze. 

So, four inspired men have sketched from life 
the original of that picture. In that case it is Jesus 
on canvas. In the four Gospels the living, acting, 
loving Jesus appears. Read his divinely-written 
history. Study- his likeness as sketched by a di- 
vine hand : survey his features. The very best 
saints that have lived on earth had their defects. 

" Defects through nature's best productions run ; 
The saints have spots, and spots are in the sun." 

But he was altogether lovely ; all lights and no 
shades ; all excellencies and no defects ; all beau- 
ties and no blemishes. He never spoke an unkind 
word, never did an injury, never uttered an un- 
truth, never practised a deception, never lost an 
opportunity of doing good, was never selfish, never 
repulsive. Jesus of Nazareth, who can portray his 
charms ! What snow-white purity amid deep cor- 
ruptions ! What calmness, while the storms of fu- 
rious passions raged in those around him ! What 
meekness amid the most provoking wrongs ! What 
persevering benevolence against the greatest hos- 
tility from earth and hell ! What undying friend- 
ship for his fickle, half-hearted disciples ! What 



64 SUFFICIENCY OF CHRIST. 

compassion for the guilty and wretched ! What 
condescension and humility, while he was King of 
kings and Lord of lords ! What naturalness ! What 
simplicity ! What affecting ease and gracefulness ! 
Oh, he was enough to charm all the angels ! The 
more we love him, the more lovely we become to 
others, and the more lovely he will become to us. 
We soon exhaust the most excellent characters of 
earth. But in the character of our Redeemer there 
are depths, heights, lengths, and breadths of loveli- 
ness that we can never exhaust through time or 
eternity. After, in heaven, we shall have seen the 
King in his beauty as many millions of years as 
there are grains of dust in our globe, there will still 
be in him an infinitude of undeveloped beauties to 
transport our expanding souls. 

But our Redeemer is as loving as he is lovely. 
There is in him not only a fulness of loveliness to 
win our love of complacency, but a fulness of lov- 
ingness to win our love of gratitude. Such is his 
personal perfection and attractiveness, that had he 
never cherished a kind thought nor done a kind 
deed for us, we would be under the strongest obli- 
gation to love him ; but how is that obligation en- 
hanced in view of what he has done for us, is now 
doing for us, and will do for us ! 



ATTRACTING OUR LOVE. 65 

" Christ loved the church and gave himself for 
it." Observe the proof of his love. He gave not 
his exertions, not his influence, not his time and 
perfections, but himself, his whole divine self, with- 
out reserve. To what did he deliver up and give 
himself ? To be born in a stable and cradled in a 
manger ; to obscurity and indigence ; to infamy 
and scorn ; to pain and anguish ; to be betrayed by 
Judas, denied by Peter, and forsaken by all his dis- 
ciples. To what did he give himself ? To Caia- 
phas, who insulted him ; to Herod, who set him at 
naught ; to Pilate, who condemned him, and to the 
Romans, who crucified him. In sum, he gave him- 
self to die the shameful, painful death of the cross. 
Were there ever such proofs of love in any other 
cause by any other being as these ? Let all the ar- 
chives of antiquity be explored, let the historic page 
be searched, bring all the generous sacrifices of 
Greece and Rome, and what are they to the ama- 
zing love of Calvary ? The love he then and there 
displayed for us guilty, graceless, hell-deserving 
sinners, passes the love of women, passes the love 
of angels, passes tongue to tell, figures to illustrate, 
fancy to imagine, thought to measure, or eternity 
itself to praise. His incarnation was the embodi- 
ment of his love ; his sermons were the precepts of 

Sufficiency of Ch.iat. 9 



66 SUFFICIENCY OF CHRIST. 

his love ; his miracles were the deeds of his love ; 
his tears were the dewdrops of his love ; his death 
was the agony of his love, and his resurrection was 
the triumph of his love ; his intercession in heaven 
is the pleading of his love ; the Holy Spirit is the 
agent of his love ; the Bible is the record of his 
love; the Gospel is the offer of his love ; the church 
is the depository of his love, and our conversion is 
the conquest and realization of his love. Glorious 
Saviour ! In being thus lovely and loving, in being 
thus attractive in his person and self-denyingly lov- 
ing to lost man, more of his glory is seen than in all 
his works and words besides. What must we think 
of the taste and temper of those who can disesteem 
such a Saviour ? What a compound of stupidity 
and depravity is the wretched soul that can be in- 
different to such personal charms and to such re- 
deeming kindness ? 



RENDERING US HAPPY. 67 



CHAPTER IX. 

The glory of Christ appears in his fulness 
of joy to render us happy. 

It was the opinion of Robert Hall that when 
the Scriptures call Jehovah the blessed God, they 
mean he is the happy God. He is clearly revealed 
as the only great fountain of blessedness. Said 
Ezra to the afflicted Jews, " Neither be ye sorry ; 
for the joy of the Lord is your strength." Said 
David, " In thy presence is fulness of joy ; and at 
thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore." 
Jesus said, " My peace I give unto you." And as 
the final Judge he will say at the last day, "Well 
done, good and faithful servant ; enter thou into the 
joy of thy Lord." One of the expressive titles which 
the ancient Hebrews gave to God was Shadah, 
which signified "the pourer or shedder forth of 
blessings." It seemed to represent him as the 
great Reservoir on the top of the universe, pouring 
out streams of blessedness to all worlds. Angels 
are not happy, and men are not happy, unless they 
share in the happiness of Him who is God over all, 



68 SUFFICIENCY OF CHRIST. 

blessed for ever. With him is the fountain of life, 
and there is not a rill, not a drop of bliss in the 
universe, which that fountain does not yield. They 
who go elsewhere for happiness wander into bound- 
less deserts, where all is drought and burning winds 
and vast desolation. As well may an angel expect 
to find happiness in children's toys, or a philoso- 
pher in blowing bubbles, as for man's great soul to 
expect to find an adequate bliss anywhere out of 
God. But in God there is everything to satisfy and 
transport the immortal mind. The joy of the soul, 
the same that fills the eternal mind, is the only joy 
that meets the desires and exigences of the immor- 
tal soul. The blessedness that Jesus Christ has 
and imparts to his disciples is permanent, strength- 
ening, ennobling, and satisfying. It makes the soul 
erect, resolute, persevering, cheerful, and strong. 
The peace that Jesus has and gives is independent 
of the changes of time, unaffected by the diseases 
of the body, uninjured by death, and untouched by 
the fires of the last day. 

See how he glorifies himself, and renders strong- 
ly happy his people by giving them his joy as they 
need and can receive it. What dresses the face of 
the young convert with such radiant smiles ? Why 
is all within him peace, and all before him trans- 



RENDERING US HAPPY. 69 

port ? Because, when he was forgiven, Christ let 
into his soul a rill of his joy. What makes that 
bedridden, suffering saint, when all creature-com- 
forts are dried up, so serene, calm, and bright ? It 
is the joy of the Lord. What is it that lifts the 
dying saint above the fear of death, softens the 
dying-bed, and strews it all over with the roses of 
paradise ? It is the joy of Christ. And what is it 
that rolls a tide of rapture all over the world of 
glory, that makes heaven heaven? It is because 
the saints above have entered more fully into the 
joy of the Lord, and the joy of the Lord has en- 
tered more fully into them, than their capacities 
would permit them to receive while on earth. In- 
deed, there is not a good man on earth or in heaven 
that does not derive all his true joys from Christ. 
Millions of His saints in all parts of the earth are 
constantly asking and receiving from Him joys that 
cheer and strengthen them in the house of their 
pilgrimage. Some of them are poor, some of them 
sick, some of them tempted, some of them dying ; 
yet to each and to all he imparts a joy that impels 
Jo duty, sustains in affliction, and cheers in toil. 
And while he is thus imparting true happiness to 
the millions of his redeemed on earth, he is pouring 
a flood of glory and felicity into the untold millions 



7 o SUFFICIENCY OF CHRIST. 

of his servants in heaven, rilling them to overflow- 
ing with the fulness of his joy. 

If there is such an inexhaustible fulness of joy 
in Christ, and he is delighted and glorified in im- 
parting his joy to his people, then it follows that it 
is not only our privilege, but our duty to be happy 
in Christ. Christianity, rightly understood, not only 
authorizes and allows, but commands us to be hap- 
py. And it is greatly important that we more 
clearly understand and fully verify this feature of 
our Saviour s character. The world's conversion 
has been greatly hindered from our not making a 
fuller test of Christ's efficiency and sufficiency to 
justify and sanctify us; and it may be well ques- 
tioned whether the cause of Christ has not been 
greatly retarded from our not having received a 
greater measure of his joy. The command of God 
is, " Rejoice in the Lord alway," and no man can 
tell how many immortal souls have gone into an 
undone eternity in consequence of its not having 
been fulfilled by the people of Christ. The salva- 
tion of the world lingers from the want of holy joy 
among the disciples of Christ. A great many pro- 
fessed Christians have practically declared their 
religion to be a gloomy thing by going to the world 
itself for pleasure. All men seek happiness, and 



RENDERING US HAPPY. 71 

when they behold the followers of Christ appearing 
less happy in serving the Lord than they did in sin, 
they are confirmed in the prejudice that religion is 
a mopish, melancholy thing, and thereby many are 
kept from embracing it. The glory of Christ, then, 
in the triumph of his gospel, demands that every 
friend of Christ should be not only a conscientious, 
devout, and liberal, but a happy Christian. He owes 
it to the cause of Christ, to himself, to his family, 
his brethren, and the world of mankind, to live a 
serene, cheerful, happy life. Perhaps the greatest 
desideratum, in order to the more rapid conversion 
of the world to Christ, is that every Christian should 
be a specimen of the happiness Christianity is adapt- 
ed to impart. When all who name the name of 
Christ shall be examples and reflectors of the joy 
of Christ, then Christianity will spread with primi- 
tive speed. 

But is it practicable to be always joyful ? Says 
one, " I would, but cannot be happy." But if God 
makes it your duty to be joyful always, under all 
circumstances, then the requirement is reasonable 
and the fulfilment practicable. It is admitted that 
the Christian cannot be happy without good cause 
for being so. But he has good cause to be joyful. 
God does not require his people to rejoice without 



72 SUFFICIENCY OF CHRIST. 

affording them an adequate object to render them 
supremely and perpetually joyful. What is it he 
requires us to rejoice in ? In the world, its profits, 
its honors, its pleasures, its friendships ? Not in 
these. His command is, " Rejoice in the Lord Je- 
sus? And is he not an adequate object to rejoice 
in ? Is he not enough in himself ? Has he not 
done enough for you and said enough to you to 
induce you, as your most reasonable, every-day 
practice, to be joyful ? All Christians have some 
causes for sadness, but they have in Christ far 
greater causes for gladness. This is the reason 
why they should rejoice even in their sorrows ; for 
however great and multiplied their causes for sor- 
row, their causes for joy far transcend those for sor- 
row. The most reduced, afflicted saint that Christ 
has on earth has in his Saviour ten thousand stron- 
ger grounds for being happy than he has to be un- 
happy. It is not so with the rejecter of Christ. 
He, amid the best surroundings of earth, has far 
more reasons for being unhappy than he has to be 
happy. But when the Christian is most reduced, 
he has in his Saviour far more and better blessings 
than he has lost. 

The point of our reasoning is this. If we have a 
Saviour who has in himself such resources of bless- 



RENDERING US HAPPY. 73 

edness, and if he is infinitely able and willing to 
impart all needed supplies of that blessedness to us, 
and if by our want of this joy we become gloomy, 
and thereby misrepresent his religion, repel from it 
the ungodly, and dishonor his name, then is not 
unhappiness in us a sin, and is not joyfulness in 
Christ our bounden duty ? Do, then, Christian 
brother, live up to your duty, and appreciate your 
precious privilege in this regard. Take down your 
harp from the willows and begin the raptured song. 
As you walk on to the grave, let all the country 
around be 'charmed and won by your sacred mel- 
ody ; and let your songs of gladness die away from 
mortal ears only to burst in new and louder tones 
on the ear of heaven. In this way Christ will be 
glorified in you more than he is by all that shines 
above and blooms beneath. In your joyfulness 
Christ's joy will be more fully realized and his glory 
more fully displayed. 



Sufficiency of Christ. 



74 SUFFICIENCY OF CHRIST, 



CHAPTER IX. 

The glory of Christ is seen in his fulness 
of consolation to support his people in their 
afflictions. 

No strength however great, no plans however 
wise, no talents however brilliant, no wealth how- 
ever unbounded, no schemes of pleasure however 
skilfully planned, can turn away from us losses, 
crosses, disappointments, and death. v Make the 
very best of life, it is a weary pilgrimage, burdened 
with many woes. How many, how complicated, 
and how crushing are the afflictions of the right- 
eous. And hence one of our great wants is some 
balm of life, some alleviation of care, something that 
shall bind up the broken-hearted and pour consola- 
tion into heavy hearts. Men everywhere seek a 
comforter and alleviator of care and sorrow, and if 
there be none, then is life a wretched, weary, gloomy 
journey. 

But there are in the Lord Jesus ample resources 
to meet this emergency. He is " the God of all 
comfort." He says to the tried and sorrowing, " I, 
even I, am he that comforteth thee." Hear other 



CONSOLING US IN AFFLICTION. 75 

of his consoling words to the afflicted : " Let not 
your hearts be troubled ; ye believe in God, believe 
also in me." " These things have I spoken unto 
you that in me ye might have peace. In the world 
ye shall have tribulation '; but be of good cheer; I 
have overcome the world." 

Now does our Redeemer fulfil and verify these 
consoling promises in the experience of his afflicted 
saints ? The experience of the saints in all ages 
bears testimony to the unfailing faithfulness with 
which the omnipotent, omniscient Jehovah fulfils 
his promises to all who put their trust in him. Not 
one afflicted believer in any land or age has ever, 
in the dark hour of sorrow and calamity, gone to 
his Saviour for supporting grace and been disap- 
pointed. It is true, many through unbelief have at 
times been ready to call his faithfulness and sus- 
taining grace in question — " The Lord hath forsa- 
ken, and my Lord hath forgotten " — yet in no in- 
stance have these gloomy apprehensions ever been 
ultimately realized, but in every case the all-faithful 
Redeemer has timely appeared for their relief, and 
convinced them that their gloomy fears were as 
groundless as they were unkind to him. Ask the 
great army of the tried and suffering who are now 
on their way to heaven if Christ ever failed to grant 



76 SUFFICIENCY OF CHRIST. 

them sustaining grace in time of need, and they 
will all tell you that their apprehensions were 
groundless — that in every case their Redeemer is 
a very present help in trouble. Ask the great host 
who have gone up to heaven through great tribula- 
tion if the Redeemer ever refused to aid them to 
endure sufferings with patience and losses with 
resignation, and No, no, no ! would resound from 
all their shining ranks. 

As no case of guilt or depravity has ever trans- 
cended the pardoning and regenerating power of 
our Saviour, so no instance of affliction has ever 
occurred among his saints beyond his comforting 
power. See how the consolations of Christ are 
imparted to his people while under the extremest 
calamities of life. When were the three Hebrew 
children visited by the heavenly guest, but when 
they were walking in the furnace for their adhe- 
rence to the truth ? When did Paul and Silas ever 
sing so rapturously as when they lay bound and 
mangled in the inner prison of Philippi ? The im- 
partation of Christ's consolations is always propor- 
tional to the exigencies of our condition. He does 
not impart solace to-day for to-morrow's trials. He 
always deals with us according to our present pe- 
cessities. When he sees we need strength, he gives 



CONSOLING US IN AFFLICTION 77 

it ; wisdom, he gives it ; pardon, he gives it ; afflic- 
tion, he sends it. So, when we need solace, he 
grants it. There is no promise more clearly veri- 
fied by the experience of the Christian than, "As 
thy days so shall thy strength be." The martyrs 
greatly needed the comforts of Christ, and his sus- 
taining grace was so signally imparted to them, that 
the violence of the fiercest flames was quenched, 
and the very fires were to them beds of roses. 
When we are well and active, we do not so much 
need the consolations of the gospel. But when we 
are bedridden and racked with bodily pains, we 
need Christ's solacing grace ; and how wonderfully 
does he vouchsafe it to such ! And how such glo- 
rify Christ in the fires ! What a testimony do they 
bear to the sustaining power of his grace, when 
they show by their patience and cheerfulness that 
Christ can sustain them when earthly supports give 
way. When we turn away from such we are con- 
strained to say, " We have heard of the religion of 
Christ, but we have now seen it manifested, to his 
own glory." 

But above all other emergencies of this life, 
death is the one in which we most need the sup- 
porting presence of our Redeemer. Of all the 
calamities of earth, death is the strongest and most 



78 SUFFICIENCY OF CHRIST. 

terrible. And how utterly inadequate are all hu- 
man supports in this new, inevitable, mysterious 
affliction ! A grateful family may minister around 
us with affectionate tenderness. Well-provided 
attendants may anticipate every bodily want. 
Wealth in abundance may be present to alleviate 
pain and dignify the condition of the dying. Sweet 
sympathy may fan the fainting spirit. These reach 
not the wants of the dying. But just here how 
gloriously Christ cheers and sustains his dying dis- 
ciples. When earthly foundations crack, tremble, 
and give way by the inrush of the black waters of 
death, the believer finds beneath his feet the Rock 
of Ages. While his hand is warm from the last 
earthly pressure, Jesus takes it and leads him for- 
ward with certain and inspiring confidence. Just 
when the accents of human affection die away upon 
his ear, he hears the voice of his great Redeemer 
saying, " Fear not, I am with thee." When his soul 
is unclothed from its mortal covering, he finds the 
beautiful garment of Christ's righteousness, which 
covers his nakedness and deformities, and clad in 
which he can mount up from his bed of death the 
shining path to glory and to God. None but the 
recording angel can tell how many saints Christ 
has enabled to die radiantly, victoriously, and use- 



CONSOLING US IN AFFLICTION. 79 

fully. Said one to whom he had given living and 
then dying grace, " Is this dying ? Is this the ene- 
my that has so long dismayed me, now appearing 
so harmless and even pleasant ?" 

If, then, our Redeemer can lighten our heaviest 
burdens, irradiate our darkest scenes, soothe our 
most corroding anxieties, dry our most sorrowful 
tears, and hush our bitterest griefs ; if he can by 
his presence cheer the broken-hearted and bring 
tears of gladness into eyes swollen with grief; if 
his consolations can produce and maintain serenity 
under evils which drive worldlings to madness ; if 
Christ can, by his love and grace, so reconcile his 
sufferers to their crosses as to send songs of praises 
from lips quivering with agony — then is he not 
infinitely worthy of the strongest confidence, the 
supremest love, and the most devoted service of 
every son and daughter of Adam ? 



8o SUFFICIENCY OF CHRIST. 



CHAPTER XI. 

The glory of Christ is seen in his fulness 
of power, to deliver and protect us. 

In the way of our being finally saved, there are 
very great and, to the eye of human reason, insur- 
mountable difficulties. To reach the heavenly 
world we must not only overcome the world with 
its frowns and. blandishments, and the flesh with its 
appetites and lusts, but legions of fallen angels 
whose perseverance, skill, and power to tempt and 
ruin are greater than we can tell. So that unless 
our Redeemer be literally omnipotent he cannot 
meet all the emergencies of our case. The mightiest 
angel is inadequate to vanquish our foes. But one 
of the glories of our Saviour is that he has all power 
given unto him, in heaven and earth. Not only 
has he omniscience for the glance of his eye, omni- 
presence for the coextension of his existence, 
eternity for the term of his being, and immensity 
for his empire, but omnipotence for the energy of 
his will ; and this he has not merely as absolute 
God, but as the Mediator. The once poor, obscure, 
Galilean mechanic is exalted to the throne of the 



PROTECTING US. 81 

universe, and is invested with complete and sov- 
ereign power, over all matter, minds, and events. 
Though he was once crucified in weakness, he is 
the mighty God, with an empire extending upwards 
as high as the flight of the highest angel, downwards 
as deep as the bottomless abyss, and outwards as 
far as the outskirts of creation, whither no created 
being ever sent a solitary thought. There is 
nothing " too hard " for our Saviour. He can do 
all his pleasure, in heaven, earth, and hell. He 
rules and renders subservient to his purposes 
towards his people, all material, animal, human, and 
angelic agents. Beings rational and irrational, 
animate and inanimate ; the heavens above, and the 
earth below, the obedience of the good, and the 
disobedience of the bad ; fallen and unfallen angels ; 
all the saved and all the damned spirits ; in a word, 
every agent from the archangel down to the atom, 
are the ministers of his will. How astonishing are 
his possessions, dominion, and power ! He is Lord 
both of the dead and living. The great empire 
of the grave, as well as all that lives and acts, is 
completely subject to his sovereign will. A world 
seems a great thing to us ; but what is our earth, 
to the millions of suns, around which roll unnum- 
bered worlds ? By him all these worlds were created 

Sufficiency of Chi ist. H 



82 SUFFICIENCY OF CHRIST. 

and are upheld. At his bidding suns lighted up 
their fires, and systems rolled to fulfil his pleasure. 
All the dispensations of Providence, however mys- 
terious and desolating in their sweep, carry out his 
designs. The mighty host of angels obey him. 
To carry into effect his mandates is their highest 
honor. He has complete empire over devils. From 
his throne high and lifted up he can descry and 
frustrate all their wiles, and say to them, " Hitherto 
shalt thou come and no farther." And in the realm 
of mind, over the will, thoughts, and affections, his 
power is as complete as it is over matter and 
events. 

There is then no difficulty or enemy in the way 
of our salvation, that he cannot, with infinite ease, 
remove and overcome. Are you dead in trespasses 
and sins ? He that called Lazarus from the sepul- 
chre can quicken you into life. Are you fast bound 
in the snares of Satan ? He that could expel seven 
devils from one and a legion from another can 
deliver you. Are you blind to spiritual glories ? 
He who gave sight to the blind men of Jericho can 
make you see. Have furious storms of trouble 
overtaken you ? He who by a word hushed into a 
calm the Galilean sea can give you repose, viz., 
he will enable you to bear your afflictions, or he 



PROTECTING US. 8 3 

will remove them. Do you complain of a heart of 
stone ? He, who by a look melted and restored a 
fallen Peter and subdued a Saul of Tarsus, can 
soften you. Were all spiritual enemies at once to 
assail you, you can take courage in the fact that 
greater is He that is for you than are they that are 
against you. True, your great enemy is mighty, 
but your Saviour is Almighty. True, you are 
nothing to your enemies, but it is also true that your 
enemies are nothing to your divine Friend and 
Keeper. Not only is our Saviour infinitely greater 
in strength than all our enemies combined, but he 
is greater in resources, greater in his agency, greater 
in his residence, greater in his subjects, and greater 
in his principles. When we remember who our 
Redeemer is, and what he has done for us, when we 
call to mind that his nature is love, his will is 
power, his thoughts are wisdom, his resources 
are all-sufficiency, his empire is the universe, and 
his duration eternity, and recollect that he has 
bound himself by a promise and covenant never to 
leave nor forsake us and that all things shall work 
together for our good, may we not triumphantly say, 
" If Christ is for us who can be against us ? With 
such a Saviour whom or what need we fear ?" The 
best Christian on earth might never overcome an- 



84 SUFFICIENCY OF CHRIST. 

other sin, never gain another triumph over the 
world, never demolish another idol, never escape 
another snare of Satan. But with Christ strengthen- 
ing us we can meet the combined assaults of earth 
and hell, and be more than conquerors. In a word, 
with such an almighty Saviour for our atoner, re- 
generator, sanctifier, leader, and intercessor, we can 
perform all of life's duties, bear all of life's trials, 
resist all of life's temptations, overcome all of life's 
enemies ; triumphantly meet life's close, and have 
ministered unto us an abundant entrance into the 
everlasting kingdom. Glorious is this Saviour, and 
ineffably safe and happy are all they who love and 
obey him ! 



MANAGING OUR SOULS' AFFAIRS. 85 



CHAPTER XII. 

In Jesus Christ there is a fulness of wisdom 
to manage in the best way the affairs of our 

SOULS. 

Though our Saviour was an obscure Jew, a 
young man, and a working carpenter, yet he was 
the greatest among the great, and the wisest among 
the wise. During the last eighteen hundred years 
the world has made great advances in science, arts, 
and civilization, but nothing has been added to the 
information that the Man of Nazareth revealed con- 
cerning God, the soul, immortality, and man's duty 
to God, himself, and others. All we certainly know 
on these great moral and religious questions, the 
son of Mary has told us. But to say of him, as 
Goethe and Renan said, that Jesus was the greatest 
of earth's reformers and philosophers, is only to 
say an infinitesimal part of the truth concerning 
him. His knowledge is as limitless as his power, his 
understanding is infinite ; he knows the end from 
the beginning ; he knows all things in their origin, 
connections, tendencies, and consequences. Every- 



86 SUFFICIENCY OF CHRIST. 

thing that has occurred in the universe, every- 
thing that is now taking place, and everything 
that will take place, is mapped out before his 
omniscient eye in perfect transparency. At a single 
glance, he looks through immensity and eternity, 
and takes in at one view all beings and events. 
He knows what will take place and what his people 
will need a thousand years to come. Nothing can 
surprise, or nonplus, or disappoint him. He knows 
how to make the most malicious wiles of hell re- 
dound to his people's greatest good, and his great- 
est glory. No part of our salvation can fail from 
any mistake on the part of our Redeemer. Never 
from eternity has he altered or amended any of his 
plans. He has never done anything for his people 
collectively or individually that could have been 
better done. Often, while he is training us for use- 
fulness and for heaven, we are perplexed and gloom- 
ily conclude in our haste that all these things are 
against our own good and our Master's honor. But 
this is our infirmity. We forget that providences 
that are trying and contradictory to us, are really 
most for our good and his glory. We ask him for 
bright lights. He in his wisdom and love sees it 
best for us to read our prayers backward and give 
us dark shadows. We desire to be put upward and 



MANAGING OUR SOULS' AFFAIRS. 87 

forward, both temporally and spiritually. But he 
in his wisdom sees we can only be put forward and 
upward spiritually, by being put backward and 
downward temporally ; hence the afflictions he 
sends on his people. Let us then always trust him, 
even when we cannot trace him ; remembering that, 
were it consistent with his glory and our holiness, 
he would give us all light and no shadows, all sweets 
and no bitters ; and no doubt at the last day, when 
the schemes of his redemption and providence shall 
be finished, we shall adoringly see that the very 
things in this life that we most sought would have 
been our ruin, had we been permitted to obtain 
them, and the very things we most tried to shun were 
the very things most essential and beneficial to us 
as disciples of Christ. What abundant reasons 
have we to rejoice in the government of such a 
God and Saviour ! What could we do without such 
an infinitely kind, powerful, and wise Saviour, who 
knows infinitely better how to plan for us than we do 
for ourselves. Better that we had never been born 
than not to have him reign over us, both in providence 
and in grace. Let us then gather up everything 
dear to us for both worlds and commit them all 
into the hands that bled for us on Calvary. We 
cannot place too much confidence in him. By 



88 SUFFICIENCY OF CHRIST. 

his atoning death and converting and sustaining 
grace, by his intercession for us before his Father's 
throne, and by his many providential interposi- 
tions in our behalf, he has attested and sup- 
ported his claim to our unwavering faith and su- 
preme love. 



JUDGING THE WORLD, 



CHAPTER XIII. 

The glory of Christ will appear in his be- 
ing INVESTED WITH THE AUTHORITY, POWER, AND 
WISDOM TO JUDGE THE WORLD, IN THE FINAL SAL- 
VATION OF HIS FRIENDS, AND IN THE ETERNAL DE- 
STRUCTION OF HIS ENEMIES. 

He must be the world's Judge, as well as its 
Atoner, Sanctifier, Model, Leader, and Intercessor, 
or he would not be a complete and infinitely glori- 
ous Saviour. The great end of human redemption 
is the glory of God the Father, the Son, and the 
Holy Ghost. And its history has already revealed 
much of that glory. In the Patriarchal, Mosaic, 
and Prophetical dispensations there were symbolic, 
sacrificial, and typical displays of Christ's glory. 
His glory was more remarkably displayed in his 
incarnation and death. Never before had Divine 
glory shone so brightly as on Mount Calvary. 
There was a glory that preceded his incarnation 
and death ; there was a glory that accompanied his 
sufferings, and there was a greater glory that fol- 
lowed his sufferings. In the darkening of the sun, 
the rending of the rocks, the opening of the graves, 

Sufficiency of Christ. 1 2 



9 o SUFFICIENCY OF CHRIST. 

and in the salvation of the dying thief and the cen- 
turion, we behold the yet unequalled display of that 
glory which accompanied the sufferings of Christ. 
But in his resurrection and ascension, in his Spirit's 
descending and converting three thousand preju- 
diced Jews on the day of Pentecost, in the trium- 
phant diffusion of his gospel over the whole Roman 
empire within a few years after his death, and in 
the untold millions that that gospel has saved from 
sin and Satan since, we behold greater and more 
convincing displays of his glory than at first issued 
from the cross. 

But neither Calvary nor the progress of the gos- 
pel since adequately display the honor of Christ. 
Very much of our Redeemer's glory is yet conceal- 
ed from men and angels. Millions of our race do 
not know that such a being as Christ exists. And 
even in those countries where he is professedly 
known, what multitudes oppose and dishonor him ! 
And more wonderful still, among those who wear 
his name, how many are there who tarnish his glory 
by denying his divinity ! Others cast him down 
from his excellency by renouncing his atonement 
and ridiculing the operations of his Spirit. And 
among his real friends, how many are there who, 
by their inconsistencies of temper and conduct, hin- 



JUDGING THE WORLD. 91 

der his glory by lowering him in the esteem of his 
enemies ! Now that the honor of the Redeemer 
should thus be concealed and lessened and cast 
into the dust is a matter of humiliation and dis- 
tress to every true believer. It is the deepest de- 
sire of every true Christian that his Saviour may 
be more fully and universally honored ; and all such 
are cheered by the thought that at the day of his 
second coming he will be completely and univer- 
sally glorified. He will then come in power and 
great glory. He will then be glorified in his saints 
and admired in all them that believe. His gran- 
deur will then be seen and acknowledged by all the 
inhabitants of heaven, earth, and hell. Far unlike 
his first coming will be his second. He was then 
humbled, suffering, persecuted, dying, nailed to the 
cross, and buried in the grave ; much of his glory 
was veiled. At his second coming he will descend 
from heaven with the glory of his Father and in the 
full brilliancy of that glory which he had with the 
Father before the world was. No more the babe of 
Bethlehem ; no more a prisoner before a human 
judge ; no more an expiring victim on the cross ; 
no more a lifeless corpse in the sepulchre ; no more 
disbelieved, opposed, and dishonored ; no more un- 
known, vilified, and misrepresented. " Behold, he 



92 SUFFICIENCY OF CHRIST. 

cometh with clouds, and every eye shall see him ; 
and they also which pierced him ; and all the kin- 
dreds of the earth shall wail because of him." Fix 
your eye on that point in the ethereal heavens where 
the gradually lessening form of our Saviour disap- 
peared from the gaze of his disciples when he as- 
cended to heaven. At that point see an uncommon 
and undefined brightness just beginning to appear. 
It catches the eye of the careless. All over the 
earth groups are formed, wondering what that 
strange light means. While they gaze, conjecture 
gives place to appalling certainty. The light be- 
gins to enlarge and approach the earth. The sun 
begins to pale before a brightness superior to his 
own. Meanwhile the light becomes a great daz- 
zling cloud, which comes rushing down as on the 
wings of a whirlwind. It pauses and suddenly dis- 
closes a great white throne, on which sits, in all the 
glories of the Godhead, the man Christ Jesus. Be- 
fore his judgment-seat all the inhabitants of heaven, 
earth, and hell shall be gathered. The universe else- 
where will be deserted, and all its fallen and unfallen 
inhabitants will stand before the great white throne. 
The books will be opened. Every eye will be intent- 
ly fixed on the Judge. Upon what a large scale will 
Christ then be glorified ! 



JUDGING THE WORLD. 93 

1. In that supreme day he will glorify his jus- 
tice in the conviction, overthrow, and punishment 
of his enemies. Already he has given displays of 
his wrath in the punishment of his foes : in sending 
on the antediluvians a baptism of vengeance ; in 
burning up the degenerate cities of the plain, and 
leaving in their place a sea of death ; in earth- 
quakes, famines, wars, and pestilences. But all 
these are but admonitory preintimations of the 
displays of his justice that will be witnessed on that 
day. There have been other days of his wrath. 
That will be the great day of his wrath. All the 
other inflictions of his wrath have been partial in 
their degree and in the number punished. But on 
that day his wrath will fall to the uttermost on all 
his enemies. There will not be a foe of his among 
fallen men or fallen angels that will not be pun- 
ished with everlasting destruction from the pres- 
ence of the Lord and the glory of his power. Never 
after that day will he have in any world an uncon- 
vinced, unchained, unpunished enemy. He will 
show his enemies that their ruin was derived from 
themselves, and that their sins are just as evil and 
odious as he had declared them to be in the Scrip- 
tures, and that they are equitably punished ever- 
lastingly in perdition. When the crimson aggra- 



94 SUFFICIENCY OF CHRIST. 

vation of the sinner's guilt shall be laid open in the 
clear light of eternity, so just and necessary will it 
appear to all that he ought to go away into everlast- 
ing punishment, that the universe will say Amen to 
his doom ; and never after the disclosures of that 
occasion will any doomed soul whisper a complaint 
that he has been punished more severely than his 
sins deserved. 

2. On that day Christ will glorify his omniscience. 
To make no mistake in fixing the destinies of men 
and angels, he must bring every work into judg- 
ment and every secret thing, whether it be good or 
whether it be evil. According to the long-published 
principles on which the last great assize is to be 
conducted, not a single sinner can be absent nor a 
single sin overlooked. Every saint, of all lands and 
ages, with every wish, desire, purpose, word, and 
deed of every saint, on the one hand, and every 
sinner of Adam's race, with every omitted kindness, 
evil thought, unchaste desire, idle and profane word 
and deed of darkness of every sinner, on the other, 
must be brought into the open court, or the assem- 
bled universe would be justified in protesting 
against the proceedings. But how can the man 
Christ Jesus bring every sinner and every sin into 
trial, unless from the beginning he has searched 



JUDGING THE WORLD. 95 

the hearts and tried the motives of the children of 
men ? However interlocked and confederated sin- 
ners and sins may be with each other, he will so 
know each and all in their isolated responsibility, 
that he will as accurately and adequately judge and 
punish each as if he and each were the only twain 
in the universe. Though amid an assembled uni- 
verse, each one will have the guilt and number of 
his sins so clearly and appallingly revealed to him, 
that he will be engrossingly insulated from all oth- 
ers. In anticipation of the disclosures of the great 
audit, the Judge has said, " These things hast thou 
done, and I kept silence ; thou thoughtest that I 
was altogether such a one as thyself ; but I will re- 
prove thee, and set them in order before thine eyes." 
How literally will he verify this prediction at his 
judgment-seat ! 

Elsewhere he says, "I will bring to light the 
hidden things of darkness, and will make manifest 
the counsels of the heart," when I come. Here he 
says he will set our sins in order before our eyes. 
When the books are opened, and the great crowd 
shall be hushed into deepest silence, and every be- 
ing shall be bending forward to hear his impending 
doom, then the Judge will, by a new miracle of his 
omniscience and power, cause all the sins of each to 



96 SUFFICIENCY OF CHRIST. 

rise up and come trooping around him. Each one 
will behold the vast picture of his sins, drawn in 
blackness, with no luminous strokes to relieve his dis- 
tressed eye. Were the Judge to lay open now the 
secret sins of the wicked, as he will at that day, they 
would be banished from society ; nay, they would 
fly from it themselves, overwhelmed with shame 
and confusion. When the sins of each are disclosed 
amid assembled worlds, all holy beings will be 
aghast, and exclaim, " Away with such to their kin- 
dred spirits in the abyss !" To the omniscient 
Judge alone the disclosure will not be amazing. 
Oh, never before will there have been such a glori- 
ous display of the omniscience of Christ. 

3. On that day lie will glorify his power in bring- 
ing his friends and enemies to judgment, and in the 
final accomplishment of his purposes i7i regard to 
them. Already we have had glorious displays of 
the power of our Redeemer in curing diseases, 
opening blind eyes, casting out devils, calming the 
seas, raising the dead ; and in raising himself from 
death he appeared in a splendor and majesty in 
which as Mediator he had never been seen before. 
But these are inconspicuous exhibitions of power 
in comparison with those he will display at the last 
judgment. When that day comes, an overwhelm- 



JUDGING THE WORLD. 97 

ing majority of our race will be among the dead. 
The bodies of hundreds of generations will have 
commingled with their mother earth, been scat- 
tered by the winds, burned by the fires, washed by 
the waters, and transmuted into the trees and into 
the flesh of other animals. Can Omnipotence, 
guided by infinite wisdom itself, reconstruct and 
reproduce alive the bodies of the buried genera- 
tions that have been thus scattered to the four 
winds ? This were the sublimest prodigy of the 
infinite God. There is no other marvel in his deal- 
ings with our race that equals it ; and yet this is 
the work with which the man Christ Jesus will be- 
gin the last great assize. He greatly amazed the 
Jews once by telling them that the spiritually dead 
would hear his voice and be raised up to spiritual life. 
They could not understand how the word of Christ 
could possess such regenerating power. Christ said 
to them, " Marvel not at this ;" as though he had 
said, "You are staggered and deem it incredible that 
I can speak into moral life souls that are dead in sin. 
But I have a yet more wonderful thing to tell you, 
which I shall hereafter do, which requires far great- 
er power. Marvel not at this, for the hour is coming 
in the which all that are in their graves shall hear 
my voice, and shall come forth." Grasp, if you 

Sufficiency of Christ. I ? 



98 SUFFICIENCY OF CHRIST. 

can, the great fact : while the myriads upon myr- 
iads shall be sleeping in death, the trumpet of God 
shall sound, and the voice of the Son of God shall 
pierce, with irresistible life-begetting, life-compel- 
ling force, every grave, and in an instant every 
member and dust of every body will seek its kin- 
dred member and dust, and every dead member of 
Adam's countless family will stand up, an intermi- 
nable living throng, ready to press forward to the 
judgment-seat. And what will add to this marvel 
of divine marvels, it will be effected instantaneously. 
Says Paul, " In a moment" And that term not suf- 
ficiently expressing the quickness of the work, he 
adds, " In the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump ; 
for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be 
raised." At one instant the bodies of the buried 
generations are dispersed to the four quarters of 
the earth, floating in waters, waving in the trees, 
and forming parts of other bodies of men and 
beasts ; and their resurrection is, to human reason, 
the greatest of all impossibilities. The next in- 
stant they have heard the voice of the Son of God, 
have been disentangled, dust has found its kindred 
dust, bone its fellow-bone, and every body is raised, 
and all are reconstructed and gathered into an in- 
numerable host, ready for the last great audit. And 



JUDGING THE WORLD. 99 

all this is effected by the same voice that said, 
" Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy- 
laden, and I will give you rest ;" and that on the 
cross said, " It is finished." Wonderful Saviour, 
who need fear to commit his all into thy hands till 
that day ? Nor will this be the only display of his 
power. The saints who are alive, on the morning 
of the judgment, will, in an instant, by the same 
power, have their bodies of flesh and blood made 
incorruptible, immortal, spiritual, and fashioned 
like unto his own body after he arose. At his bid- 
ding all these saints and sinners, as an immense 
cloud, will rise up through the air — as they ap- 
proach the tribunal, his friends, with hallelujahs, 
going to the right hand, and his enemies, with 
groans, to the left. 

His power will also be signally displayed and 
glorified in the arraignment and doom of the devils. 
When they fell, he prepared a hell for them, and 
has kept them partially chained in that world of 
darkness. To the judgment of the great day these 
devils are looking with dread as the time of their 
complete punishment and overthrow. Hence when 
Jesus was about casting a legion of them out of a 
Gadarene, they cried out, saying, " What have we 
to do with thee, Jesus, thou Son of God ? Art thou 



ioo SUFFICIENCY OF CHRIST. 

come hither to torment us before the time f y The 
same power that has been reserving them in chains 
under darkness, will on that great day tear off the 
covering of hell and cause them to ascend, to meet 
before assembled worlds the rebuke and doom they 
have so long merited. The most awful and con- 
vincing evidence will then be furnished, that Christ 
has supreme control over men, angels, death, and 
hell. Men and devils resist him now, but none will 
then be able to stay his hand, or dare to say unto 
him, " What doest thou ?" Heaven, at his command, 
will open all its infinite enjoyments to his disciples; 
and the doors of hell, at his bidding, will close in 
on all his enemies. To all who love him, his smile 
will be heaven, and to all who hate him, his frown 
will be hell. From his face the heavens and the 
earth will flee away ; and at his word a new heaven 
and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness, 
will arise in their stead. 

4. At the judgment day lie zvill glorify his holi- 
ness. By his word and by his judgment, and espe- 
cially by his atoning cross and renewing Spirit, he 
has done much to arrest the ravages of sin, and to 
extirpate it from man and from the earth ; still Satan 
and sin, to a great extent, have the world for their 
empire and mankind for their prey. Nor do we know 



JUDGING THE WORLD. 101 

that their sway will be entirely broken, by the mil- 
lennial reign. That will consist in the general 
prevalence of Christianity. Now the glory of God 
demands that the great rebellion that commenced in 
heaven, when the angels kept not their first estate, 
and on earth, when our first parents fell, should be 
entirely put down ; that all who have taken sides 
with Satan against him, should be vanquished, either 
by his grace or by his j udicial power. In one of these 
ways Jesus will conquer all his enemies. He has 
declared that every knee shall bow to him, and 
every tongue shall confess that he is Lord, to the 
glory of God the Father ; and as certainly as he is 
God, his every enemy must thus bow and confess — 
voluntarily and believingly, or involuntarily and 
penally. The only option wicked men have is in 
which way they will submit. All whom the judg- 
ment-day finds unsubdued in the former, will be 
vanquished in the latter way. All on the right 
hand of the Judge will be they who were subdued 
by grace ; all on the left will be they who remained 
Christ's enemies ; and they will be punished with 
everlasting destruction from the presence of the 
Lord, and from the glory of his power. All classes 
of sinners and all grades of sins will on that day be 
so exposed, abashed, condemned, and punished, as for 



io2 SUFFICIENCY OF CHRIST. 

ever to have their God-dishonoring career ended. 
Man will then in wrath be transferred from his place 
of sinning to the abode of penal suffering; and 
the earth which he had polluted will be purified by 
the judgment fires. After the great audit the en- 
tire universe, hell excepted, will be freed from sin. 
Earth, where the great rebellion occurred, having 
been purified by a deluge of fire, will give place to 
new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth 
righteousness. In hell, all unredeemed men and 
fallen angels will be confined for ever, a fearful 
cautionary monument of the evil of sinning against 
God. 

One class of sinners will meet, from the Judge, 
a more intolerable doom than any others. It will 
be the gospel-rejecters. Whoever may hope for an 
audience on the day of visitation, they cannot 
expect it. Were any allowed to be absent, certain- 
ly they would not be. Were a day of judgment 
appointed for no other class, the judgment-throne 
would be erected and the books opened for them. 
Whoever may hope to come off with a lighter doom, 
rejecters of Christ cannot expect it. Their sin 
will throw all others into the shade. The most 
ordinary proceedings of that clay will be invested 
with a greater solemnity, than the universe has 



JUDGING THE WORLD. 103 

ever before beheld. But when the rejecter of 
Christ shall be arraigned, when all that Christ 
vainly did to save him shall be revealed, the atten- 
tion of the universe will become breathless and 
intense; and when his doom is pronounced* the 
voice of the Judge will take a deeper tone, and 
speak with a more awful emphasis, as he utters the 
malediction, " Depart from me, I never knew you." 

Rejecters of Christ will meet a deeper perdition 
than the heathen or the devils. Christ did not die 
for the devils, and was never rejected by the heathen. 
And in this deepest perdition of the ungodly, Christ's 
holiness and justice will be glorified. In the very 
misery of the second death, the universe will read 
the hatefulness of sin and God's aversion to it. 

5. At the last day yesus will be glorified in the 
consummation of his kindness to his disciples. His 
redeeming favors are bestowed in distinct and suc- 
cessive stages — each stage better than the prece- 
ding—by which his people are carried from blessing 
to blessing, till they reach the very summit of sal- 
vation. The beginning of the series of Christ's 
benefits is the forgive?iess of sin. That removes the 
law's penalty, the sting of death, the wrath of God, 
and the damnation of hell, changes our state and 

* Dr. Harris. 



1 04 6" UFFICIENC Y OF CHRIST. 

nature, puts in our possession a right and title to 
heaven. Then our relations to the universe are 
changed, we draw the first breath of a new life, and 
aim at heaven. Death comes and our Redeemer 
vouchsafes to us a far greater measure of his re- 
deeming goodness. If we are Christ's then death 
is ours ; ours not to escape, but ours to vanquish, 
and to usher us into the ever-blooming paradise of 
God. 

None but believers who have died can tell how 
much we gain by dying. It is one low moan, and 
then eternal song. It is one brief, sharp conflict, 
and then we have for ever vanquished sin, Satan, 
self, death, and hell, and with the quickness of 
thought are with Christ, where our every pain is 
eased, our every desire fulfilled, and our every hope 
realized. The Christian's death brings glory to 
Christ and heaven to himself. But the introduction 
of the soul into Paradise completes neither the 
salvation of the believer nor the glory of Christ. 
So long as the bodies of the saints are under the 
dominion of death, Christ's work is incomplete, and 
his honor in our salvation not fully displayed. 
Accordingly on the morning of the last judgment 
" The Lord shall descend from heaven with a shout, 
with the voice of the archangel, with the trump of 



JUDGING THE WORLD. 105 

God, and the dead in Christ shall rise first." This 
Scripture has been supposed to allude to the trum- 
pet of Jubilee, that proclaimed the liberation of all 
prisoners in Israel, at the end of every fifty years. 
What joyful hopes would be raised in the captives, 
as the forty-ninth year approached its close ! How 
bright their countenances when the sun of the last 
day set ! When just as the sun of the first day of 
the fiftieth year arose, ten thousand trumpets blew 
through every quarter of the land, and every prison 
door was opened and every captive was freed from 
debt, and set at liberty. In some such way, on the 
morning of the last day, the Lord shall descend 
from heaven with a shout, when all heaven, the 
souls of the redeemed, an innumerable company of 
angels, each of all the holy intelligences in God's 
universe, shall unite in one general shout, that shall 
rend the earth, and proclaim the deliverance of all 
the dead in Christ ; when every saint of every land 
and age will spring from the dust of death, radiant 
with immortality. How will their eyes sparkle with 
joy and echo back the shouts from heaven, when 
they behold themselves delivered from the dominion 
of death, possessed of bodies immortal, spiritual, 
and glorious. This will be the third stage of that 
glorious salvation that Jesus effects in his people. 

Sufficiency of Christ. I A 



10S SUFFICIENCY OF CHRIST. 

All Christ's other redeeming achievements are 
small compared with this. This eclipses, in glory, 
his other exploits. But this is subservient to another 
and higher stage of redemption ; which will be 
their acquittal at the bar of heaven, amid assembled 
worlds. When the Judge vanquishes and dooms 
his enemies, he will do it in the presence of all his 
friends, and when he absolves, acquits, and rewards 
his friends, he will do it in the presence of all his 
enemies. " Before him shall be gathered all nations ; 
and he shall separate them one from another, as a 
shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats." Not 
one of his enemies will be on his right hand ; not 
one of his friends will be on the left. "Then shall 
the king say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye 
blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared 
for you from the foundation of the world." What 
gracious, heaven-revealing, heaven-bestowing words. 
Then, when the assembled universe shall be hushed 
into silence and the Judge shall be distributing 
endless life and endless death, the same voice that 
on earth said, " Come unto me," will say " Come," 
and the same hands that were pierced on Calvary, 
will place on their heads the crown of life. What a 
bright contrast between those on the right and 
those on the left hand. To those on the right, it is 



JUDGING THE WORLD. 107 

" Comer To those on the left, " Depart? To his 
friends, "Ye blessed of my Father." To his ene- 
mies he will utter the awful malediction, " Depart, 
ye cursed." One will be the blessed of the Father ; 
and if God blesses them, how full, efficacious, and 
irreversible the blessing ! The hatred and impre- 
cations of the universe cannot injure those whom 
God blesses. Those on the left hand will be cursed 
of his Father. No language can tell, nor imagina- 
tion can conceive the terrors of being cursed, at the 
last day, by the incarnate Judge. When that terrific 
sentence falls from the lips of the blessed Jesus, 
the last drop of the soul's bliss will be dried up, the 
last star of hope blotted out. Those on the right 
hand will be welcomed to the bosom of infinite love, 
and into the kingdom prepared for them from the 
foundation of the world ; and when Jesus says to 
them, Come, every mansion and inhabitant of heaven 
will echo the invitation, Come. But acquitting, 
applauding, and crowning his redeemed in the 
presence of all worlds, does not complete the glory, 
honor, and blessedness, to which Christ will finally 
exalt them. The final judgment being ended, wicked 
men and angels being doomed to their eternal penal 
abode, the righteous being acquitted, and God's 
government vindicated before all worlds, the Judge 



108 SUFFICIENCY OF CHRIST. 

with all his followers will ascend to the heaven of 
heavens, where, with all his redeemed, of all ages 
and nations, fully delivered from the ruins of the 
fall, soul and body and both reflecting his own 
image, he will present them before his Father's 
throne, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, 
as the crown and reward of his mediatorial work. 

Behold the mediatorial work of Christ finished 
in the complete deliverance of his people from the 
ruins of the grave, and the deeper ruins of the fall. 
See a multitude that no man can number in the 
fulness of perfect joy before the throne of God. 
Oh how do their knowledge, their purity, their digni- 
ty, their bliss, their undying friendship for each 
other, and their perpetual and eternal safety, glorify, 
in the estimation of all worlds, Him that loved them 
and washed them from their sins in "his own blood. 

The discussion of this subject suggests some 
most important inquiries. 

i. When we first look at Christ, and see in him 
an infinite inexhaustible fulness of spiritual bless- 
ings, a fulness of light sufficient to scatter the 
world's darkness ; of merit to atone for the world's 
guilt ; of mercy to pardon all sins ; of grace to sanc- 
tify all hearts ; of beauty to win our supreme love ; 
of excellency for our imitation and transformation ; 



JUDGING THE WORLD. 109 

of joy to make all human beings blessed for ever; 
of consolation to support man under all trials and 
afflictions ; of power to protect from all enemies, 
and deliver from all difficulties ; of wisdom to man- 
age all man's interests in the best way ; and of au- 
thority and power to judge the world — and then 
turn to mankind and see them utterly devoid of all 
these blessings, that so redundantly dwell in Christ ; 
behold them ignorant, guilty, vile, depraved, loving 
the hateful and hating the lovely, miserable, sor- 
rowful, unable to overcome their foes, and incom- 
petent to take care of themselves — when we thus 
see the infinite, saving, available fulness of the 
Redeemer, and the appalling, hopeless emptiness of 
man, the question arises how may there be formed 
between the unsaved and the Saviour a channel of 
communication, up which may go our application, 
and down which may come supplies from Christ's 
fulness ? Between the all-sufficient Saviour and the 
all-needy sinner, there is a wide disseverance. 
From the one to the other there must be formed a 
conduit, or no adult sinner can be saved through 
Christ. In order to our being saved through Christ's 
sufficiency, it is just as essential that there should 
exist between him and us a channel of communica- 
tion, as it is that there should be a Christ. Nor are 



no SUFFICIENCY OF CHRIST. 

we ordinarily the passive recipients of his fulness. 
Those whom he saves thus are exceptional. His 
rule is to save through a well-understood means on 
our part. What is it ? It is not the sacraments. 
They are commemorative and sanctifying, and not 
regenerative. Nor is the channel in question pray- 
er. That is an application through the previously- 
formed channel. It is not natural goodness. 
Thousands possess that who are utterly without 
God and Christ in the world. It is not strictly 
penitence. That is the change of the soul's view of 
sacred things, when it has commenced receiving of 
Christ's sufficiency. It is not the church. We are 
received into the church through Christ, and do not 
receive Christ by becoming members of his church. 
It is not the ministry. No pope, priest, prelate or 
pastor, can come in between Christ and the sinner, 
and be the medium of grace to his soul. What 
then is the heaven-appointed channel ? It is a 
personal, living, leaning, loving faith. It is not 
feeling and faith, or works, or reformation and faith, 
but faith only. This is God's plainly revealed ap- 
pointment. He has ordained and proclaimed that 
whenever any sinner begins to exercise faith in 
Christ, he begins that moment to partake of the 
fulness in Christ ; and the degree in which he par- 



JUDGING THE WORLD. in 

takes of this fulness will be just in proportion to 
the strength of his faith. Hence the singular prom- 
inence the Bible gives to faith. It is called by the 
apostle Peter "precious faith," for what can be 
more precious than that which forms an indissoluble 
union and free communication between a lost, 
needy, guilty sinner and the Saviour, in whom dwells 
ail the fulness of the Godhead. He who exercises 
this faith is saved in his state and nature, and is 
incalculably rich, though he should possess nothing 
else ; and he who exercises not this faith is miser- 
ably poor, though he should possess all the world 
can give. No matter what a man is and does in 
other respects that God demands, if he has never 
made a believing application to Christ, he has no 
share in this fulness. His mind is unenlightened, 
his sins are unpardoned, his heart is unsanctified, 
and the wrath of God abideth on him. According 
to the repeated and clear teachings of the Scriptures, 
faith in Christ is the pivot and turning point of one's 
present and eternal salvation. None are qualified 
to enter either his earthly or heavenly kingdom, 
but those to whom he imparts his fulness ; and 
none receive his fulness but those who believe in him. 
If then faith in Christ be the very cardo rerum, 
the hinge of salvation, if in the Scriptures the same 



ii2 SUFFICIENCY OF CHRIST. 

blessings that are ascribed to Christ are ascribed 
to faith in him, then how vitally important that we 
know what it is to believe in Christ. The Scrip- 
tures, to make this vital exercise plain, employ a 
variety of plain figures. They represent faith as 
coming to Jesus. He himself said, "Come unto 
me." "Him that cometh unto me I will in nowise 
cast out." Go to him, approach him in desire and 
determination, and that will be faith in Christ. 
Though you creep to him as the poor lame man, or 
grope your way to him as the poor blind man, that 
will constitute a saving channel between you and 
Christ. But do you say, that you are so utterly 
impotent as to be unable to move to him, in any 
way ? Then Jesus in the Gospel is offered to you 
as the free and unspeakable gift of God. Stretch 
forth thy hand and receive that gift, and that 
will constitute between thy soul and Christ the 
channel of communication. But do you say that 
your arm is so paralyzed by sin that it hangs power- 
less at your side, and that you cannot stretch it 
forth ? Then the Gospel represents Jesus as the 
most attractive, charming object in the universe. 
Look unto him, and that will answer for saving faith. 
But do you say, Alas ! sin has so filmed and weak- 
ened your eyes that you cannot see him ? Then 



JUDGING THE WORLD. 113 

poor sinner, if you can do nothing else lie still just 
as you are, and "submit to the righteousness of 
God," allowing Jesus to throw over thee the robe of 
his righteousness, and that will answer for faith in 
Christ, for "whosoever will" may take him for a 
Saviour. What is it to believe in Christ ? It is to 
hear him when he calls ; obey him when he com- 
mands ; tremble when he threatens, and trust him 
when he promises. It is to build on him as our 
foundation, enter him as our refuge, appropriate 
him as our propitiation, confide in him as our guide, 
apply to him as the balm of Gilead, and feed on 
him as the bread of life. In a word it is to accept 
him as God's greatest gift for all the purposes he 
is appointed to accomplish. 

2. Having seen how awakened sinners are made 
partakers of Christ's pardoning and regenerating 
fulness, a second question is, how are Christians to 
make the most of his fulness in their religious growth. 
Having seen how Christ is of God made unto the 
sinner wisdom and righteousness, the question 
arises how is he to be made unto the justified be- 
liever, sanctification ? It cannot be denied that 
the standard of personal religion with the mass of 
professors is distressingly low. Before Chris- 
tianity achieves the general triumphs that await 

Sufficiency of Christ. I C 



ii4 SUFFICIENCY OF CHRIST. 

her, there must be a general and great improvement 
in Christian character; and what is the best way 
to effect this improvement is an inquiry inferior in 
importance to no other. Many plans are proposed, 
such as fasting, prayer, self-examination, and exer- 
tions to do good. But of all means, for the thorough 
and speedy improvement of our religious character, 
habitual application to the fulness of Christ is the 
most efficacious. The best means of religious growth 
is the continuance of the same faith that secures to 
the soul pardon and regeneration. Our meagre at- 
tainments in religion arise from our practically re- 
garding the faith that saves as an isolated act, at the 
commencement of our religious life, instead of a life- 
long habit. Genuine faith is not a single applica- 
tion to Christ, but a continued exercise. The grow- 
ing Christian is not one that came and transacted 
an affair with Christ, and then has nothing more to 
do with him, but one that cometh to Christ. The 
apostle Peter seems to exclude those from genuine 
religion whose faith is a single action, instead of a 
course of action. "To whom coming as unto a 
living stone." We sin constantly ; and as we con- 
tract fresh guilt are called on to perform new duties, 
bear new trials, and resist new temptations, we need 
continually to apply to him. We should not, as is 



JUDGING THE WORLD. 115 

the custom of some, reserve the atonement as a 
high mystery to be contemplated on special occa- 
sion, but we should turn it to daily practical account. 
We will go just so far in religion, as we believe in 
Christ, and no farther. Our eminence in religion — 
our zeal, humility, courage, prayerfulness, patience, 
and joy — will be just in proportion to the frequency 
and confidence of our applications to the fulness of 
Christ. No effect can exceed its cause. There are 
no other resources adequate to secure and prompt 
to holiness of heart and character, but the suffi- 
ciency of Christ. Dissevered from this, we will 
sink to the level of those around us. Hear the 
experience of Richard Baxter. Referring to a cer- 
tain temptation he says, " From this I was forced 
to take notice that our belief is the spring of all 
grace ; and with it rises or falls, flourishes or 
decays, is actuated or stands still ; and that there 
is more of this secret unbelief than most of us are 
aware of ; and that our love of the world, our bold- 
ness in sin, our neglect of duty, are caused hence ; 
I easily observe in myself that if at any time Satan 
more than at other times weakened my belief 
in Christ my zeal in every religious duty abated 
with it, and I grew more indifferent in religion than 
before. But when faith revived, then none of the 



1 1 6 5 UFFICIENC Y OF CHRIST. 

parts or concerns of religion seemed small ; and 
then man seemed nothing, the world a shadow, and 
God was all." An abiding faith in Christ makes 
a strong will ; and this will induce perseverance, 
energy, and holy achievement. Of all ways habitual 
faith in Christ is the quickest and most efficient to 
make the spirit erect, resolute, bold, pure, and in- 
defatigable. In simple daily confidence in the Re- 
deemer, are all the elements of perfect holiness 
and Christ-like perfection. The greatest act of the 
soul is to rely on its all-sufficient Saviour. Do 
this, and all else in religion will follow. Christians ! 
would you be enabled to walk in the way of the 
Ten Commandments, imitate in your measure the 
character of your Saviour ; make the greatest pos- 
sible attainment in purity, do the greatest amount 
of good, live the firmest, happiest life attainable in 
this world, make the best preparation to die tri- 
umphly, and in all glorify your Saviour upon the 
largest scale. Then see to it that the life you live 
in the flesh you live by the faith of the Son of God 
who loved you and gave himself for you. 



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